Astronomy Picture of the Day - Charon Flyover from New Horizons

NASA ^ | 19 May, 2025 | Video Credit: NASA, JHUAPL, SwRI, P. Schenk & J. Blackwell (LPI); Music: Juicy by ALBIS

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: What if you could fly over Pluto's moon Charon -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it zipped past Pluto and Charon with cameras blazing. The images recorded allowed for a digital reconstruction of much of Charon's surface, further enabling the creation of fictitious flights over Charon created from this data. One such fanciful, minute-long, time-lapse video is shown here with vertical heights and colors of surface features digitally enhanced. Your journey begins over a wide chasm that divides different types of Charon's landscapes, a chasm that might have formed when Charon froze through. You soon turn north and fly over a colorful depression dubbed Mordor that, one hypothesis holds, is an unusual remnant from an ancient impact. Your voyage continues over an alien landscape rich with never-before-seen craters, mountains, and crevices. The robotic New Horizons spacecraft has too much momentum to ever return to Pluto and Charon and is now headed out of our Solar System.

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TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: apod; nasa

[MtnClimber]

To be added or removed from the Astronomy Picture of the Day ping list please send me a request via "Private Reply" (Mail).

For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

Today's image is a quite dim video at the source link. Please note that the video comes up with the music audio muted. Make sure to unmute if you want the audio.

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔 Today's image is a quite dim video at the source link. Please note that the video comes up with the music audio muted. Make sure to unmute if you want the audio.

[GaltAdonis]

Yesterday we flew over Pluto, now we are flying over one of it’s moons!
Cool!

Thanks!

(But no, I’m not considering retiring there…)

[oldplayer]

Thanks, MtnClimber.

[algore]

I was able to get an extreme close up picture that they did not want you to see.

[bk1000]

Wait… so Pluto is a planet again? With a moon and everything? Yay! I missed Pluto.

[Verginius Rufus]

Pluto has 5 known moons. Charon is unusual in being about half the diameter of the planet it orbits. They are locked together so an observer on Pluto would always see the same side of Charon and an observer on Charon would always see the same side of Pluto.

[telescope115]

Cool.