new horizons images Archives

On July 14th, 2015, the New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto and its moons. In the course of making its way through this system, the probe gathered volumes of data on Pluto and its many satellites using a sophisticated suite of instruments. These included the first detailed images of what Pluto and its largest moon (Charon) look like up close.

And while scientists are still analyzing the volumes of data that the probe has sent home (and probably will be for years to come), the New Horizons mission team has given us plenty of discoveries to mull over in the meantime. For instance, using the many images taken by the mission, they recently created a series of high-quality, highly-detailed global maps of Pluto and Charon.

The maps were created thanks to the plethora of images that were taken by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and its Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Whereas LORRI is a telescopic camera that was responsible for obtaining encounter and high-resolution geologic data of Pluto at long distances, the MVIC is an optical and infrared instrument that is part of the Ralph instrument – the main imaging device of the probe.

*Global mosaic of Pluto, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPI*

The Principal Investigator (PI) for the LORRI instrument is Andy Cheng, and it is operated from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Laurel, Maryland. Alan Stern is the PI for the MVIC and Ralph instruments, which are operated from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. And as you can plainly see, the maps are quite detailed and eye-popping!

Dr. Stern, who is also the PI of the New Horizons mission, commented on the release of the maps in a recent NASA press statement. As he stated, they are just the latest example of what the New Horizons mission accomplished during its historic mission:

“The complexity of the Pluto system — from its geology to its satellite system to its atmosphere— has been beyond our wildest imagination. Everywhere we turn are new mysteries. These new maps from the landmark exploration of Pluto by NASA’s New Horizons mission in 2015 will help unravel these mysteries and are for everyone to enjoy.”

*Global mosaic of Charon, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPI*

And these were not the only treats to come from the New Horizons team in recent days. In addition, the mission scientists used actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models to create flyover movies that show what it would be like to pass over Pluto and Charon. These videos offer a new perspective on the system and showcase the many unusual features that were discovered on both bodies.

The video of the Pluto flyover (shown above) begins over the highlands that are located to the southwest of Sputnik Planitia – the nitrogen ice basin that measures some 1,050 by 800 km (650 by 500 mi) in size. These plains constitute the western lobe of the feature known as Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped region that is named after the man who discovered Pluto in 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh.

The flyover also passes by cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula before moving north past the highlands of Voyager Terra. It then turns south towards the pitted region known as Pioneer Terra before concluding over Tartarus Dorsa, a mountainous region that also contains bowl-shaped ice and snow features called penitentes (which are found on Earth and are formed by erosion).

The flyover video of Charon begins over the hemisphere that the New Horizons mission saw during its closest approach to the moon. The view then descends over Serenity Chasma, the wide and deep canyon that is named after the ship from the sci-fi series Firefly. This feature is part of the vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon, which is one of the longest in the Solar System – 1,800 km (1,100 mi) long 7.5 km (4.5 mi) deep.

The view then moves north, passing over the Dorothy Gale crater and the dark polar region known as Mordor Macula (appropriately named after the domain of the Dark Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings). The video then turn south to fly over the northern terrain known as Oz Terra before finishing over the equatorial plans of Vulcan Planum and the mountain of Clarke Montes.

These videos were color-enhanced in order to bring out the surface details, and the topographic relief was exaggerated by a factor or two to three to emphasize the topography of Pluto and its largest moon. Digital mapping and rendering of these videos was performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston.

It may be many years before another mission is able to travel to the Trans-Neptunian region and Kuiper Belt. As a result, the maps and videos and images that were taken by the New Horizons mission may the last glimpse some us get of the Pluto system. Luckily, the New Horizons mission has provided scientists and the general public with enough information to keep them busy and fascinated for years!

Further Reading: NASA

‘Here be Dragons…’ read the inscriptions of old maps used by early seafaring explorers. Such maps were crude, and often wildly inaccurate.

The same could be said for our very understanding of distant planetary surfaces today. But this week, we’ll be filling in one of those ‘terra incognita’ labels, as New Horizons conducts humanity’s very first reconnaissance of Pluto and its moons.

The closest approach for New Horizons is set for Tuesday, July 14^th at 11:49 UT/7:49 AM EDT, as the intrepid spacecraft passes 12,600 kilometres (7,800 miles) from Pluto’s surface. At over 4 light hours or nearly 32 astronomical units (AUs) away, New Horizons is on its own, and must perform its complex pirouette through the Pluto system as it cruises by at over 14 kilometres (8 miles) a second.

This also means that we’ll be hearing relatively little from the spacecraft on flyby day, as it can’t waste precious time pointing its main dish back at the Earth. With a downlink rate of 2 kilobits a second—think ye ole 1990’s dial-up, plus frozen molasses—it’ll take months to finish off data retrieval post flyby. A great place to watch a simulation of the flyby ‘live’ is JPL’s Eyes on the Solar System, along with who is talking to New Horizons currently on the Deep Space Network with DSN Now.

A snapshot of the current July 13th view of New Horizons as it nears Pluto. (Image credit: NASA's Eyes on the Solar System). — A snapshot of the current July 13th view of New Horizons as it nears Pluto. (Image credit: NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System).

Launched in 2006, New Horizons is about to join the ranks of nuclear-fueled explorers that have conducted first time reconnaissance of solar system objects.

Bob King also wrote up an excellent timeline of New Horizons events for Universe Today yesterday. Also be sure to check out the Planetary Society’s in-depth look at what to expect by Emily Lakdawalla.

Seems strange that after more than a decade of recycling the same blurry images and artist’s conceptions in articles, we’re now getting a new and improved shot of Pluto and Charon daily!

To follow the tale of Pluto is to know the story of modern planetary astronomy. Discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh from the Lowell Observatory, Pluto was named by 11-year old Venetia Burney. Venetia just passed away in 2009, and there’s a great short documentary interview with her entitled Naming Pluto.

Blink comparitor — The blink comparitor Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto, on display at the Lowell Observatory. Image Credit: David Dickinson

Fun fact: Historians at the Carnegie Institute recently found images of Pluto on glass plates… dated 1925, from five years before its discovery.

Despite the pop culture reference, Pluto was not named after the Disney dog, but after the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto the dog was not named in Disney features until late 1930, and if anything, the character was more than likely named after the buzz surrounding the newest planet on the block.

We’re already seeing features on Pluto and Charon in the latest images, such as the ‘heart,’ ‘donut,’ and the ‘whale’ of Pluto, along with chasms, craters and a dark patch on Charon. The conspicuous lack of large craters on Pluto suggests an active world.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) convention for naming any new moons discovered in the Plutonian system specifies characters related to the Roman god Pluto and tales of the underworld.

Brake for New Horizons on July 14th… Image credit: David Dickinson

With features, however, cartographers of Pluto should get a bit more flexibility. Earlier this year, the Our Pluto campaign invited the public to cast votes to name features on Pluto and Charon related to famous scientists, explorers and more. The themes of ‘fictional explorers and vessels’ has, of course, garnered much public interest, and Star Trek’s Mr. Spock and the Firefly vessel Serenity may yet be memorialized on Charon. Certainly, it would be a fitting tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy. We’d like to see Clyde Tombaugh and Venetia Burney paid homage to on Pluto as well.

We’ve even proposed the discovery of a new moon be named after the mythological underworld character Alecto, complete with a Greek ‘ct’ spelling to honor Clyde Tombaugh.

The discovery and naming of Charon in 1978 by astronomer Robert Christy set a similar precedent. Christy choose the name of the mythological boatman who plied the river Styx (which also later became a Plutonian moon) as it included his wife Charlene’s nickname ‘Char.’ This shibboleth also set up a minor modern controversy as to the exact pronunciation of Charon, as the mythological character is pronounced with a hard ‘k’ sound, but most folks (including NASA) say the moon as ‘Sharon’ in keeping with Christy’s in-joke that slipped past the IAU.

And speaking of Pluto’s large moon, someone did rise to the occasion and take our ‘Charon challenge,’ we posed during the ongoing Pluto opposition season recently. Check out this amazing capture of the +17^th magnitude moon winking in and out of view next to Pluto courtesy of Wendy Clark:

Clark used the 17” iTelescope astrograph located at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia to tease out the possible capture of the itinerant moon.

Great job!

What’s in a name? What strange and wonderful discoveries await New Horizons this week? We should get our very first signal back tomorrow night, as New Horizons ‘phones home’ with its message that it survived the journey around 9:10 PM EDT/1:10 UT. Expect this following Wednesday—in the words of New Horizons principal Investigator Alan Stern—to begin “raining data,” as the phase of interpreting and evaluating information begins.

And there’s more in store, as the New Horizons team will make the decision to maneuver the spacecraft for a rendezvous with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) next month. Said KBO flyby will occur in the 2019-2020 timeframe, and perhaps, we’ll one day see a Pluto orbiter mission or lander in the decades to come…

Maybe one way journeys to ‘the other Red Planet’ are the wave of the future.’ Pluto One anyone?

Tag: new horizons images

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