[meteorite-list] Different Faces of Pluto Emerging in New Images from New Horizons

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 17:17:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201506120017.t5C0H7kE005759_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/different-faces-of-pluto-emerging-in-new-images-from-new-horizons

June 11, 2015

Different Faces of Pluto Emerging in New Images from New Horizons

The surface of Pluto is becoming better resolved as NASA's New Horizons
spacecraft speeds closer to its July flight through the Pluto system.

A series of new images obtained by the spacecraft's telescopic Long Range
Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during May 29-June 2 show Pluto is a complex
world with very bright and very dark terrain, and areas of intermediate
brightness in between. These images afford the best views ever obtained
of the Pluto system.

New Horizons scientists used a technique called deconvolution to sharpen
the raw, unprocessed pictures that the spacecraft beams back to Earth;
the contrast in these latest images has also been stretched to bring out
additional details. Deconvolution can occasionally produce artifacts,
so the team will be carefully reviewing newer images taken from closer
range to determine whether some of the tantalizing details seen in the
images released today persist. Pluto's non-spherical appearance in these
images is not real; it results from a combination of the image-processing
technique and Pluto's large variations in surface brightness.

Since April, deconvolved images from New Horizons have allowed the science
team to identify a wide variety of broad surface markings across Pluto,
including the bright area at one pole that scientists believe is a polar
cap.

"Even though the latest images were made from more than 30 million miles
away, they show an increasingly complex surface with clear evidence of
discrete equatorial bright and dark regions - some that may also have variations
in brightness," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of
the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "We can also see
that every face of Pluto is different and that Pluto's northern hemisphere
displays substantial dark terrains, though both Pluto's darkest and its
brightest known terrain units are just south of, or on, its equator. Why
this is so is an emerging puzzle."

"We're squeezing as much information as we can out of these images, and
seeing details we've never seen before," said New Horizons Project Scientists
Hal Weaver, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
in Laurel, Maryland. 'We've seen evidence of light and dark spots in Hubble
Space Telescope images and in previous New Horizons pictures, but these
new images indicate an increasingly complex and nuanced surface. Now,
we want to start to learn more about what these various surface units
might be and what's causing them. By early July we will have spectroscopic
data to help pinpoint that."

New Horizons is approximately 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers)
from Earth and just 24 million miles (39 million kilometers) from Pluto.
The spacecraft and payload are in good health and operating normally.
 

[Images]
These images, taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager
(LORRI), show four different "faces" of Pluto as it rotates about its
axis with a period of 6.4 days. All the images have been rotated to align
Pluto's rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down) on the figure,
as depicted schematically in the upper left.From left to right, the images
were taken when Pluto's central longitude was 17, 63, 130, and 243 degrees,
respectively. The date of each image, the distance of the New Horizons
spacecraft from Pluto, and the number of days until Pluto closest approach
are all indicated in the figure.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute

[Images]
These images show dramatic variations in Pluto's surface features as it
rotates. When a very large, dark region near Pluto's equator appears near
the limb, it gives Pluto a distinctly, but false, non-spherical appearance.
Pluto is known to be almost perfectly spherical from previous data.
Credits: : NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute

[Images]
These images are displayed at four times the native LORRI image size,
and have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens
the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally
introduce "false" details, so the finest details in these pictures will
need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few
weeks. All of the images are displayed using the same brightness scale.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute

Last Updated: June 11, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert
Received on Thu 11 Jun 2015 08:17:07 PM PDT