This 3-D image of Pluto, which requires red/blue stereo glasses for viewing (click the picture for a full-screen version), shows a region 180 miles (300 kilometres) across, centred near longitude 130°E, latitude 20°N (the red square in the global context image). North is to the upper left. The image shows an ancient, heavily cratered region of Pluto, dotted with low hills and cut by deep fractures indicating extension of Pluto’s crust. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.Global stereo mapping of Pluto’s surface is now possible, as images taken from multiple directions are downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Stereo images will eventually provide an accurate topographic map of most of the hemisphere of Pluto seen by New Horizons during the 14 July flyby, which will be key to understanding Pluto’s geological history.
This example, which requires red/blue stereo glasses for viewing, shows a region 180 miles (300 kilometres) across, centered near longitude 130°E, latitude 20°N (the red square in the global context image). North is to the upper left. The image shows an ancient, heavily cratered region of Pluto, dotted with low hills and cut by deep fractures indicating extension of Pluto’s crust.
Analysis of these stereo images shows that the steep fracture in the upper left of the image is about 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) deep, and the craters in the lower right part of the image are up to 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometres) deep. Smallest visible details are about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometres) across.
NASA’s New Horizons probe, three years outbound from Pluto, has woken from electronic hibernation, healthy and on course for a New Year’s Day flyby of an even more remote Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will remain at Ceres for the rest of its mission, heading closer to the asteroid belt’s largest resident than ever before to obtain new measurements of ice, salts and a tenuous intermittent atmosphere detected around the dwarf planet, the space agency announced Thursday.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft doesn’t pass Pluto until July 14th — zipping by about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometres) above the surface of the dwarf planet after a journey of almost 3 billion miles — but the mission team is making tantalising new discoveries as the piano-sized probe bears down on the Pluto system.
