"Pluto and its moon Charon. They may just be blurry dots, but they're blurry dots of an unprecedented sort." (NASA)
Posted on 04/29/2015 2:41:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin
you can see the best-ever images of Pluto, our solar system's most distant (dwarf) planet. The animation is made up of images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft between April 12 and 18 from a distance of 69 to 64 million miles from Pluto. They capture one complete rotation of Pluto and its moon Charon...
The images have already surpassed the Hubble's resolution, but there are plenty of features too subtle for the spacecraft to pick up. In fact, the images don't even show all of Pluto's known moons yet -- let alone any smaller ones we've yet to discover with the Hubble.
But NASA representatives say the photos are just teases of what's to come. In fact, NASA is now going to share New Horizon's new images (raw and unenhanced) online with a delay of just a couple of days. In mid-May we'll get a glut of new photos, and on May 28 the probe will start sending back daily photos, approaching an eventual resolution so good that comparable pictures of the Earth would show features as tiny as Central Park. The probe will make its closest pass of the planet on July 14.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Send SUV’s stat! No errant ice caps allowed.
If there isn’t an ice cap, I’m sure it is only because of man made global warming.
Interesting. Irregular shape?
Thanks for posting.
Wow,
My guess is that it is a light colored region opposite the “ice cap” (maybe another ice cap?)
But the pixels are so small that the bright return makes it look like a lump
It ain’t a planet and it ain’t a moon!
Charon must has a heck of a mass if it perturbed Pluto that much in its orbit. That of Pluto is hollow.
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