A close-up image of an area on Pluto’s largest moon Charon reveals a depression with a peak in the middle.
This new image of an area on Charon has a strange feature (shown in the left bottom corner of the image). Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
The image above shows an area around 240 miles (390 km) from left to right, including few visible craters.
It was taken at approximately 6:30 a.m. EDT (3:30 a.m. PDT, 10:30 a.m. GMT) on July 14, about 80 minutes before closest approach to Pluto, from a range of 49,000 miles (79,000 km).
Currently New Horizons is approximately 1.86 million miles (3 million km) from the Pluto system.
This image of Pluto’s largest moon Charon was taken on July 13 from a distance of 289,000 miles (466,000 km). The inset is a black-and-white close-up taken on July 14. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
The spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.
Recent measurements obtained by the probe indicate that Charon has a diameter of 750.6 miles (1,208 km), 9.5 percent that of Earth’s.
