NASA’s New Horizons has beamed back color pictures of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.
An artist’s concept of Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
“Even at this low resolution, we can see that Pluto and Charon have different colors – Pluto is beige-orange, while Charon is grey. Exactly why they are so different is the subject of debate,” explained Dr Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, New Horizons Principal Investigator.
The images were taken in three colors (blue, red and near-infrared) on nine different occasions from May 29 to June 3, 2015, using the Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera aboard the New Horizons probe.
“Color observations are going to get much, much better, eventually resolving the surfaces of Charon and Pluto at scales of just kilometers. This will help us unravel the nature of their surfaces and the way volatiles transport around their surfaces,” said New Horizons deputy project scientist Dr Cathy Olkin, also from the Southwest Research Institute.
New Horizons will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, zipping by about 7,800 miles (12,500 km) above the dwarf planet’s surface.
Charon almost completes one orbit around the dwarf planet Pluto in a series of images taken by NASA’s New Horizons. The space probe was roughly 50 million km from Pluto when it took these images. This movie is ‘Pluto-centric,’ meaning that Charon is shown as it moves in relation to Pluto, which is digitally centered in the movie. Looking closely at the images in this movie, one can detect a regular shift in Pluto’s brightness – due to the brighter and darker terrains on its differing faces. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
The New Horizons scientists have just completed a new analysis of hazard-search observations of the Pluto system.
The data were taken May 29-30 and June 5, using the LORRI instrument on the spacecraft. For these observations, LORRI is commanded to take hundreds of long-exposure images, which are combined to enable a highly sensitive search for faint satellites, rings or dust-sheets in the system.
All elements of the process went well, including the observations and the search for new moons or rings that might present hazards to the fast-moving New Horizons.
The observations easily detected Pluto and its moons, but no rings, new moons, or hazards of any kind were found.
The scientists determined that satellites as faint as about 4 times dimmer than Pluto’s faintest known moon, Styx, would have been seen if they existed beyond the orbit of Charon.
