This image of Pluto was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach on 14 July 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the Sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto’s atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The image was taken with New Horizons’ Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometres) to Pluto. The resolution is 700 metres (0.4 miles). Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of Pluto.
This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on 14 July 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the Sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto’s atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost part of the disc. On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 metres) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.
The backlighting highlights more than a dozen high-altitude layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The horizontal streaks in the sky beyond Pluto are stars, smeared out by the motion of the camera as it tracked Pluto. The image was taken with New Horizons’ Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometres) to Pluto. The resolution is 700 metres (0.4 miles).
Mapping Pluto’s ‘Broken Heart’ In addition to transmitting new high-resolution images and other data on the familiar close-approach hemispheres of Pluto and Charon, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is also returning images — such as this one — to improve maps of other regions. This image was taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the morning of 13 July 2015, from a range of 1.03 million miles (1.7 million kilometres) and has a resolution of 5.1 miles (8.3 kilometres) per pixel. It provides fascinating new details to help the science team map the informally named Krun Macula (the prominent dark spot at the bottom of the image) and the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto’s “heart” (Tombaugh Regio). Pluto’s north pole is on the planet’s disc at the 12 o’clock position of this picture. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.
The Youngest Crater on Charon?
New Horizons scientists have discovered a striking contrast between one of the fresh craters on Pluto’s largest moon Charon and a neighbouring crater dotting the moon’s Pluto-facing hemisphere.Charon’s young ammonia crater. The informally named Organa crater (shown in green) is rich in frozen ammonia and — so far — appears to be unique on Pluto’s largest moon. Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.The crater, informally named Organa, caught scientists’ attention as they were studying the highest-resolution infrared compositional scan of Charon. Organa and portions of the surrounding material ejected from it show infrared absorption at wavelengths of about 2.2 microns, indicating that the crater is rich in frozen ammonia – and, from what scientists have seen so far, unique on Pluto’s largest moon. The infrared spectrum of nearby Skywalker crater, for example, is similar to the rest of Charon’s craters and surface, with features dominated by ordinary water ice. This composite image is based on observations from the New Horizons Ralph/LEISA instrument made at 10:25 UT on 14 July 2015, when New Horizons was 50,000 miles (81,000 kilometres) from Charon. The spatial resolution is 3 miles (5 kilometres) per pixel. The LEISA data were downlinked 1-4 October 2015, and processed into a map of Charon’s 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) panchromatic images used as the background in this composite were taken about 8:33 UT on 14 July 14 at a resolution of 0.6 miles (0.9 kilometres) per pixel and downlinked 5-6 October. The ammonia absorption map from LEISA is shown in green on the LORRI image. The region covered by the yellow box is 174 miles across (280 kilometres). Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.Using telescopes, scientists first observed ammonia absorption on Charon in 2000, but the concentrations of ammonia around this crater are unprecedented.
“Why are these two similar-looking and similar-sized craters, so near to each other, so compositionally distinct?” asked Will Grundy, New Horizons Composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We have various ideas when it comes to the ammonia in Organa. The crater could be younger, or perhaps the impact that created it hit a pocket of ammonia-rich subsurface ice. Alternatively, maybe Organa’s impactor delivered its own ammonia.”
Both craters are about the same size — roughly 5 kilometres (3 miles) in diameter — with similar appearances, including bright wisps or rays of ejected material, or ejecta. One apparent difference is that Organa has a central region of darker ejecta, though from the map created with data from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument, it appears that the ammonia-rich material extends beyond this dark area.
“This is a fantastic discovery,” said Bill McKinnon, deputy lead for the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team from Washington University in St. Louis. “Concentrated ammonia is a powerful antifreeze on icy worlds, and if the ammonia really is from Charon’s interior, it could help explain the formation of Charon’s surface by cryovolcanism, via the eruption of cold, ammonia-water magmas.”
On July 14th, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Pluto, offering the first close-up look at that small, distant world. You can help decide what names will be used on subsequent maps of the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon, as the SETI Institute announces the launch of its “Our Pluto” campaign.
The first well-resolved colour photos of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, speeding toward a close-up encounter July 14, show a world blotched with dark features spanning two very different sides of the dwarf planet.
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