Posted on 06/11/2015 6:40:58 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is still 24 million miles and more than a month away from the dwarf planet Pluto, but the probe's pictures are already revealing a world that's more complicated than previously thought.
"They show an increasingly complex surface with clear evidence of discrete equatorial bright and dark regions — some that may also have variations in brightness," the mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, said Thursday in an image advisory. "We can also see that every face of Pluto is different, and that Pluto's northern hemisphere displays substantial dark terrains."
The brightest as well as the darkest regions, however, appear to be on the icy world's equator or just south of it. "Why this is so is an emerging puzzle," Stern said.
Like previously released pictures, the images taken between May 29 and June 2 show a bright area at one of Pluto's poles that scientists suspect is an ice cap. Some of the pictures make it look as if Pluto is non-spherical — but the scientists say that's just an illusion, caused by the intensive image processing as well as the wide variations in surface brightness.
...
One picture that's been posted to the UnmannedSpaceflight.com discussion forum appears to show a dark streak dividing bright areas on Pluto's disk. Icelandic imaging whiz Björn Jónsson says it looks like an honest-to-goodness surface feature, and may hint at activity on the surface.
"Dark lines crisscrossing a disk! It's the discovery of canali on Pluto!" the Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla half-jokingly observed. "We have reached Schiaparelli-quality mapping of Pluto's surface!"
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/
LORRI Images from the Pluto Encounter
(displayed in raw form without special stretching)
Welcome to the New Horizons image site, where NASA and the New Horizons mission are happy to provide these JPEG images - displayed in raw form without special processing - for the public to use and enjoy. These JPEGs of images taken by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) are generally posted within 48 hours after receipt at the New Horizons Science Operations Center. The date/time listed in the image caption is when the picture was taken by the spacecraft, though receipt of the data on Earth could be many days later, depending on when the image is downloaded from New Horizons.
That’s it?
Will they get better?
It’s pining for the fjords.
Closest pass will be about July 6th.
Looks like it has an udder.
Thanks.
Do you need glasses? Are they fuzzy to you? That place looks awesome.
Its an intergalactic refueling station. And inn.
It looks like my first B&W TV just before the picture tube went out.
Still too fuzzy. Will there be sharper ones as the probe gets closer?
Still nearly 24,000,000 miles out.
There’s a face of a guy with a Stalin mustache in the first pic, or am I seeing things? :)
"The right version has been sharpened using RegiStax. The sharpened version reveals a diagonal dark band on Pluto - it's now absolutely certain that this is a real feature. In contrast, the apparently brighter terrain at the right limb is almost certainly a processing artifact. Charon may be starting to show large scale markings, i.e. possibly very slightly darker terrain in its upper left 'quadrant'. But this could easily be an image processing artifact.
...
"It wouldn't surprise me if small dark spots started appearing within the bright terrain at much higher resolution and/or small bright spots started appearing within the dark terrain."
Bjorn Jonsson http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=f65bb4f467e2cf3d2d7919bd2b76c127&showtopic=7970&st=240&p=221117&#entry221117
There are no black people there...so obviously Pluto is racist.
That’s it?
Will they get better?
...
A whole lot better. But for now, each day will give us the best pictures ever, even though they aren’t all that impressive yet.
The homeys might burn it down as well...
What's with this metric crap. That's why Europeans are so jacked up. Even they can't figure it out.
canoli on Pluto? .. wow.
LMAO...reverend AL is taking donations to go riot on pluto!
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