By now, I've crosschecked my tentative identification of Kerberos and Styx with this image and these metadata, and found - after correction for systematic translation, 90° rotation, and proper choice of the coordinate axis convention - consistency up to maybe two pixels.

-- So, I'd say, even the JPGs - despite a loss of 4 + ε bits per pixel relative to the lossless images - are now at a level, that we have an opportunity to make discoveries beyond HST.

Got a very similar result as yours again Bjorn. Differing processes resulting in a similar set of features would yield that most visible elements are real at this point I think.

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Here's my take, pretty modest sharpening, enlargement, and stack:

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Here is a try from June 25th images with MVIC coloration.

Robert

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If you had showed me that Pluto image with no context (and no Charon), I would have thought it was a picture of Iapetus.

Pluto system flyby simulation video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f19tTPlUoqc

I'm really looking forward to the close-up of Pluto and Charon in the same frame.

(This video or something similar may have been posted elsewhere in the past, but I'll leave it here for reference and convenience.)

Here is a big diagram from the PDS Rings Node Pluto Viewer showing Pluto at the time of the 2015-06-25 05:37 images. The diagram is big enough for the position of the terminator to be obvious. The orientation matches the orientation of the image I posted above (it's upside-down relative to the raw JPGs).

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The phase angle is only 15° and the terminator is near the limb. For this reason, any topographic shadows aren't likely to become visible until the resolution has become much higher than it currently is.

Alan Stern has said that there will be Observation Playbooks other than the one for the early release stuff. I hope that there is one for all of the observations in the Near Encounter Phase. And even earlier and later phases of the encounter. Too much information is sometimes not enough. :-)

According to this article, NASA's SOFIA will be making infrared observations of Pluto during the NH encounter, and on June 29 it will be in Australia during Pluto's occultation of a 12th mag. star.

What a great opportunity to use NH's observations during the encounter as a way to confirm details that may only be hinted at in the SOFIA data from the occultation!

This is an attempt to combine the best recent images - as processed by our wizards here - into a global map of Pluto. Please bear in mind that the registration to the coordinate grid is not very rigorous, in particular because it's not easy to fit to the limb at this resolution. But it gives you an idea. Zero longitude, facing Charon, is at the left edge, 180 in the middle. Approximately! I hope we'll get an official version of this soon so I can fix mine.

Phil

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You just need to resize the picture of Phil Stooke to 1024x512 and save it to PNG, then replace the Pluto.png file in the ...\Stellarium\textures directory and get a good view of Pluto !

To view Pluto, with Stellarium, center the view on Nix (F3 then Nix then Enter) then go to Nix : Ctrl-G. Done. Right now this is what the Nixians are seeing, of course the texture of Charon is not yet up o date :

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I took the liberty of combining Phil's map with Marc Buie's color map:

First, run-of-the-mill color blending mode:
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Second, a more creative interpretation, using several layers and blending modes:
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In both cases, I offset the Buie maps 80 pixels to the right to (attempt to) align the most prominent albedo features.

Naturally, take this all with a grain of salt, it's just Photoshop fudging.

Great job!

Phil

In fact it inspired me to add the old mutual events map to mine. (your colour is from the HST map)

Phil

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While waiting for the next batch of images to appear I decided to process the most recent four image set. It was obtained on 2015-06-23 04:04. Here is the result, a stack of four images. The processing is similar to what I did earlier. A version with a lat/lon grid is also included to show the image orientation. The orientation is slightly different from what it has been in most of the earlier images,

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Nothing particularly interesting here compared to images that have already been posted here except maybe for one thing: The 'irregularities' near the lower right limb are probably at least partially real.

Charon clearly has a dark polar region. From the raw JPGs, its brightness is maybe ~70 percent of the brightness of the brighter terrain (this is a *very* crude estimate).

Great maps in the posts above and very useful.

Great maps guys. Pluto, the best abstract artist in the Solar System! Phil, I might have to consider putting that last one on a wall.

Here is a crude and very preliminary map of Pluto based on my June 21, 22, 23 and 25 processed images (one set of images per day). It has more obvious processing and resampling artifacts than Phil's map. The major features match Phil's map but I think my map might less accurate than Phil's map north of latitude ~65 degrees but it is probably more accurate closer to the equator (especially near the boundary of the dark terrain). Longitude 0 is at the left edge and longitude 180 at center.

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As in the maps above, contrast is greatly exaggerated. The dark terrain isn't as dark relative to the bright terrain as the maps might suggest.

And here is a rotation movie of Pluto created using the map I posted above. It's crude - but not nearly as crude as the rotation movie I posted 10 days ago. This one is much more accurate.

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From this distance, Pluto is looking very much like Triton with similar processes in place in terms of a polar cap which seems to be sublimating with potential geysers. Don't you agree?

Pluto has a lot more contrast (= different heat distribution), though, and different colours (= different surface chemistry). I'd guess this alone could make for some fundamental differences for Pluto's surface geology.

You mean Pluto, the one that was untill a few years ago thought to be a lost sattelite of Neptune ?

And....NOT even a planet today !!!

Hard to tell yet. We know so little about both but at first glance yes. The two are similiar and it makes me speculate if all tnos are going to be of similiar material because the material out there is different. But there is charon which looks kinda like a rockier body whereas pluto is covered in hydrocarbon dirt at first glance.


I think we are in for some pretty big suprises...the worst part is going to be having to wait till september for the best data and high res images.

Between this, rosetta and dawn this is the most exciting time in space exploration i can ever remember. We wont have to wait for the evening news like with voyager.

Looks like banding or stripes at the north pole like europa has.. Artifact?

Yes, the banding/stripes at the pole are a processing artifact. The map I created/used for doing the movie is more accurate farther from the pole.

Regarding Triton, there is a lot of detailed information about it available in the preview for the Encyclopedia of the Solar System (2014) on Google here. Should be a good relevant warm-up for the Pluto flyby.

I'm not so sure. I've been seeing these same lines show up for several weeks now. Wouldn't rule them out just yet.

Bjorn's very nice map showed me I had an offset in longitude in mine, so I have corrected that and re-done the added colour from mutual events.

Phil

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These maps don't match up to HST map images.

Is it a matter of resolution?

Actually, if you look at the HST maps on Mark Buie's website:

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/pluto/hrcmap.html

They don't really match each other!

Here is a comparison of an average of all five maps on Buie's page with the map I just posted above. I think the match is reasonable. The large dark patch and adjacent bright region are quite similar.

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Phil

Well this could mean several different things.

1) Previous observations have yielded lots of artifacts that have made their way into the final versions.
2) Current processing of NH data is yielding lots of artifacts
3) Pluto is quite active and has changed a bit in 20 years.

I'll be hoping for door #3.

Also, I think the maps actually look a lot alike.

Edit:

Here's a crude annotated comparison of features I notice.
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I think the most likely explanation is that the resolution of the NH images is now considerably higher than the resolution of the previous older data. My map should be fairly accurate (keeping in mind the resolution of the source data), except near the pole.

Of course I'm hoping for ZLD's #3 (changes to the surface) but I have doubts about large scale changes (I'm not sure though how fast the albedo features could change due to e.g. condensation and/or sublimation).

Good catch.


Maybe plutos atmosphere is more fluid and active than we think. Maybe the surface is always changing. Ive seen a few videos of the possibility of planetwide hydrocarbon snowfalls on a pretty frequent basis when its closer to the sun.

Also, the HST maps were based on imagery using blue and ultraviolet filters. LORRI uses "wide spectral region extending approximately from 350 nm to 850 nm." A lot of worlds look different in UV than in a wide spectral range centered on the visible. Don't overlook this possible source of discrepancy.

New images from the 27th. We just have 2 (so far) - here they are enlarged 4x and merged with some stretching and sharpening. A bit more detail on Charon now?

Phil

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PS - this is south up... the dark polar spot isn't apparent. Not sure why.

June 27th data. Only 2 images again so word of caution in regards to noise presence.

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Also, I've been looking for a good short series of the Triton approach to test this same method on. If anyone wants to clue me in other than scouring OPUS/PA or the image indexes, I would grateful.

That dark "patch" towards the sourthern part of Pluto still surprises me. I keep waiting for detail to emerge but nothing yet.

That brings me to a question. Is the black patch on Pluto about the same brightness as the dark pole of Charon? I keep thinking Charon's pole is lighter but that may be an optical illusion.

And, a second question...Was there enough resolution two weeks ago to actually tell if any of the bright areas towards the southern pole of Pluto have changed shape? I'm obviously thinking about clouds (or at least wispy versions of clouds). Changes in shape would be one way to get a hint of clouds.

Andy

That picture is south-up. The dark area is south of the equator. It's not the same as the tiny dark spot at the north pole which Bjorn illustrated earlier.

Phil

Thanks Phil. I'll correct my comment above.

Andy

Circa 40% of Tritons surface was imaged by Voyager..what percentage of Plutos surface will be imaged at close encounter by NH?

All of it is going to get imaged. 35 percent at high resolution

June 26, single image.

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(non corrected orientation)
The sharpness of Charon is almost certainly not real. The features may be similar but I don't think i can pull that sharp of a line.

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Didn't realize there was such a large dump today.

Here's another from June 26.

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MOD NOTE: The New Horizons Pluto System Encounter thread is now open. Please post all observations after 28 Jun 15 on that thread. Thanks!

Placing a bet on a relatively bright spot on Charon (centre-left; from 27 June)

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The two big dark patches [ one next to the South pole and the other one next to it ] - are they not just craters ? To my untrained eye,
it seems like that for a week or so.

Here is my version of the 2015-06-27 05:32 images together with the viewing geometry. This is a stack of two images. The processing is similar to my earlier images with one exception: I used quadratic resampling instead of Lanczos resampling when enlarging the images in ImageMagick and then sharpened the images a bit more than earlier. The result is similar overall sharpness and less obvious resampling artifacts but the details on Pluto and Charon are unchanged.

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The boundary of Pluto's dark terrain is becoming more irregular now. The feature near the limb at upper right is particularly interesting. Inspection of the original JPGs reveals that it is real. Looking closely at the diagram shows that the terminator is at upper left, i.e. the sun illuminates Pluto from lower right. This rules out shadows associated with a crater and makes this feature likely to be due to albedo variations.

The shape of the dark spots on Charon is becoming more irregular now with the increasing resolution.

It was more than that. 40% at relatively high resolution, but another ~30% at much much better resolution than we can do from earth.

Quick question, which side is Pluto's leading hemisphere? I presume the left side, right?

The viewing geometry has been confusing me a bit - but if I now understand it correctly, the south poles of neither Pluto nor Charon are visible at this point. Look at e.g. the illustration from Bjorn Jonsson or the globe used to illustrate the rotational axis in this image.

For Pluto, the pole is usually the sharpest mid-range gray feature visible near a limb in the brightest section of Pluto in any of the iamges. That doesn't give you a precise point to focus on but it'll get you in the right area every time.