Still lots of planets left to explore in our own system

What I'm most struck by in the image is how, while there's a few high relief craters, most craters are so flat as to be barely visible. I hesitate to use the word "eroded", but that's what it reminds me of. Or "filled".

But maybe it's a perspective or lighting thing, or perhaps my expectations are tuned to the appearance of craters on smaller bodies than Pluto.

Below is a close-up of the transition area near the Whale's Head. It's interesting to look at the crater types and numbers. It appears there are large areas of smooth areas without craters and then some Europa-type craters as well as what appears to be some cracks in the ice.

Click to view attachment

This is the press release image with 4x magnification and some sharpening.

Andy

The craters also appear to have a weird double ring / donut shape. There is the really prominent one in the center of your zoom and then the much larger one on the limb at the top left (which I think is one of the large craters we saw in earlier images?). The horizontal lines are also interesting.

-kap

Ok, it would appear that Charon has lots of craters. Hope we can see the latest image soon.

Well, there is one other thing: a moldy cantaloupe!

Pluto atmosphere radio occultation about to begin.

This "nub" is different. There is a crater in front of it. But, with very little analysis, it seems like the nub's shadow isn't matching the solar direction or it's larger than it should be based on the surrounding terrain.

Click to view attachment

Andy

Did anyone catch what Alice Bowman said about the data recorders a few minutes ago? Something about having early data saying they were filling.. audio cut out.

Dr. Bowman said that when they received telemetry last night they could see that two of the solid state recorder segments had been filled with data. There are many segments and as data is recorded they will fill-up, as expected.

Andy

New Horizons Mission Celebration – Arrival at Pluto:
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/inde...;catid=1:latest

Edit:
NASA News Briefing on New Horizon Mission:
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/inde...;catid=1:latest

Pluto, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Charon in 1978 by James Christy; Clyde and many others would have definitely wanted to see them, but impossible in those time ..
we are lucky, we see them today ..
we can
Daniele

Pluto-Triton 6Km/pixel

The most interesting of the craters to me in the magnified picture is the small one on the lower right. It looks like it hit right at the transition and blew the dark material across the transition boundary between the dark and light material.

Jim Christy is well and alive, actually he was at JHUAPL today! Maybe that's not what you meant but to me it sounded like he had died.

Pluto and Triton from the equivalent global color shots from each flyby.

Click to view attachment

Emilly's got the full resolution image: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...tary.org/blogs/

NASA News Briefing on New Horizon Mission:
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/inde...;catid=1:latest

Very Sorry, I meant that Clyde and many others would have definitely wanted to see them, but impossible in those time ..

Big congratulations to the team for getting us there! Compared to (my somewhat vague memory of) the big planet flyby's, I think we're seeing things develop on a much shorter timescale with Pluto - the rate of increase of the apparent size of Jupiter, say, would've been much slower. So this makes it that much more exciting...

Back to business: Emily asked about colour - I don't recall the response. It appears this morning's release has been colourized with a single hue. Here's the extracted hue channel:
Click to view attachment
Can't wait to see proper colour!

Could this be a large slightly-elongated impact basin with icy ejecta spreading toward the lower right?
Click to view attachment
Charon had to have bounced off somewhere before going into orbit!

Clyde is along for the ride!

Clyde Tombaugh's ashes.

The first impression I got by looking at today's release was Mars, in great part due to the colour. Looking forward to pure MVIC colour images (we should have one down with Pluto 480 pixels across on Thursday). MVIC images at similar resolution should look a lot better.

I hope in some way it is there. .

The highest resolution picture seems to show terrain carved by ice deposition and sublimation. The cratering visible even within the darkest regions seem to indicate whatever formed these must be old.

Climatic processes are at work at pluto judging from the latest picture. We need the close ups at closest approach to really be able to comment upon tectonic structures. I understand Alan Stern when he said he was not sure about tectonic structures on pluto at this point in time.

Canberra now has two antennas being configured for NH; must be preparing for the radio occultations.

A list of scheduled imaging observations with better than 1 km/pixel resolution:

Pluto (LORRI)

July 14 04:13:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 179248.28 km away at est. resolution 0.89 km/pix.
July 14 04:14:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 178588.97 km away at est. resolution 0.89 km/pix.
July 14 04:15:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 177929.68 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:16:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 177270.40 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:17:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 176611.14 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:17:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 175951.89 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:18:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 175292.66 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:19:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 174633.44 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:20:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 173974.24 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:21:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 173315.06 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:21:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 172655.89 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:22:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 171996.74 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:23:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 171337.60 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:24:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 170678.48 km away at est. resolution 0.85 km/pix.
July 14 04:25:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 170019.38 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:25:51 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 169360.30 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:26:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 168701.23 km away at est. resolution 0.84 km/pix.
July 14 04:27:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 168042.18 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
July 14 04:28:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 167383.15 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
July 14 04:29:03 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 166724.13 km away at est. resolution 0.83 km/pix.
uly 14 06:10:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 15 images of Pluto with LORRI from 83646.234 km away at est. resolution 0.41 km/pix.
July 14 06:43:00 EDT
New Horizons is taking 23 images of Pluto with LORRI from 56315.602 km away at est. resolution 0.28 km/pix.
July 14 07:17:48 EDT
New Horizons is taking 70 images of Pluto with LORRI from 30003.890 km away at est. resolution 0.15 km/pix.
July 14 07:26:28 EDT
New Horizons is taking 130 images of Pluto with LORRI from 23859.780 km away at est. resolution 0.12 km/pix.
July 14 07:58:30 EDT
New Horizons is taking 60 images of Pluto with LORRI from 15386.759 km away at est. resolution 0.076 km/pix.
July 14 11:04:08 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 160954.31 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 11:05:01 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 161681.58 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 11:05:54 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 162408.88 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:06:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 163136.20 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:07:40 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 163863.55 km away at est. resolution 0.81 km/pix.
July 14 11:08:33 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Pluto with LORRI from 164590.92 km away at est. resolution 0.82 km/pix.
July 14 11:41:41 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 191887.68 km away at est. resolution 0.95 km/pix.
July 14 11:42:39 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 192684.40 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:43:37 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 193481.14 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:44:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 194277.90 km away at est. resolution 0.96 km/pix.
July 14 11:45:33 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 195074.67 km away at est. resolution 0.97 km/pix.
July 14 11:46:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Pluto with LORRI from 195871.45 km away at est. resolution 0.97 km/pix.

Pluto (MVIC)

July 14 07:05:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC Color from 39384.908 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 07:20:16 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 28206.280 km away at est. resolution 0.56 km/pix.
July 14 07:31:05 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 20854.035 km away at est. resolution 0.41 km/pix.
July 14 07:50:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 13735.372 km away at est. resolution 0.27 km/pix.
July 14 08:00:41 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 16282.704 km away at est. resolution 0.32 km/pix.
July 14 08:08:13 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Pluto with MVIC from 20323.226 km away at est. resolution 0.40 km/pix.


Charon (LORRI)

July 14 04:32:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 178279.45 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:33:19 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 177623.82 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:34:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 176968.26 km away at est. resolution 0.88 km/pix.
July 14 04:34:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 176312.76 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:35:43 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 175657.33 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:36:31 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 175001.97 km away at est. resolution 0.87 km/pix.
July 14 04:37:19 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 174346.67 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 04:38:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Charon with LORRI from 173691.45 km away at est. resolution 0.86 km/pix.
July 14 05:14:42 EDT
New Horizons is taking 6 images of Charon with LORRI from 143819.25 km away at est. resolution 0.71 km/pix.
July 14 06:23:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 12 images of Charon with LORRI from 88389.251 km away at est. resolution 0.44 km/pix.
July 14 07:43:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 67 images of Charon with LORRI from 34200.236 km away at est. resolution 0.17 km/pix.

Charon (MVIC)

July 14 07:45:29 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Charon with MVIC from 33245.206 km away at est. resolution 0.66 km/pix.

Nix (LORRI)

July 14 04:05:11 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 156736.78 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 04:05:59 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 156083.94 km away at est. resolution 0.77 km/pix.
July 14 04:06:47 EDT
New Horizons is taking 2 images of Nix with LORRI from 155431.16 km away at est. resolution 0.77 km/pix.
July 14 05:57:13 EDT
New Horizons is taking 13 images of Nix with LORRI from 66612.933 km away at est. resolution 0.33 km/pix.
July 14 10:55:27 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 184363.28 km away at est. resolution 0.91 km/pix.
July 14 10:56:17 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 185044.97 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.
July 14 10:57:07 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 185726.69 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.
July 14 10:57:57 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Nix with LORRI from 186408.45 km away at est. resolution 0.92 km/pix.

Nix (MVIC)

July 14 07:14:32 EDT
New Horizons is taking an image of Nix with MVIC from 22235.744 km away at est. resolution 0.44 km/pix.

Hydra (LORRI)

July 14 10:44:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 156723.64 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:45:45 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 157326.38 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:46:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 157929.86 km away at est. resolution 0.78 km/pix.
July 14 10:47:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 158534.08 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:48:15 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 159139.03 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:49:05 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 159744.70 km away at est. resolution 0.79 km/pix.
July 14 10:49:55 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 160351.08 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:50:45 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 160958.17 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:51:35 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 161565.95 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.
July 14 10:52:25 EDT
New Horizons is taking 4 images of Hydra with LORRI from 162174.42 km away at est. resolution 0.80 km/pix.

The variations of ice deposits on pluto could be related to composition or perhaps more significant local topography that might explain the persistence of the brightest region on the equator.

Hum, not sure. I thing it's done. Have to be sent 4,5 hours earlier.

The first impression I got when viewing the 'teaser' image was that it looked like it was done in 'sepia' mode. The color is very interesting. Hopefully we will get another sample planetoid thing as NH plows ahead thru the Kuiper Belt.

plus, NH is unusual in that for the radiooccultation the spacecraft listens instead of transmitting

This is a little bit old - in the light of the new higher res amazing pics - but still maybe of interest. I had too much fun working on the image and then colourizing ......so I missed the new pics as I just lost track of time!! ……Hᴜɢʜ….ツ
Click to view attachment

Yep, colourised. The first thing I did was convert to grayscale.




I like that presentation. But the South pole of Triton is on it's left, and the North pole of Pluto is on the top.

An alternate treatment would be to orient the Triton image with the pole on top on a basis of similar climatic zones (attached):


--Bill

Oh, duh; didn't realize that. Thanks!

High passed and level streched !

Click to view attachment

Yes, both the occultations are over. Charon was around 1410 GMT. Pluto about 1.5 hours earlier.

Guys would we NEVER images of Cerbero and Stige?
And the south polar region of Pluto?
M ThankS.

The newest pictures are amazing!

What surprises me most is the lack of craters. I was aware that Pluto had an atmosphere that potentially precipitated snow but I expected there to be a similar amount of craters to Mars. I didn't really want to get my hopes up.

But instead it turns out Pluto has only about twenty of thirty craters on the entire approach hemisphere visible from this distance! And the love heart shaped feature is looking far smoother than I expected. I can't wait for the flyby data to come back to Earth!

Gotta remember that Mars is right next door to the asteroid belt. For that matter, the inner Solar System has a lot more junk than the outer environs, plus much higher potential relative impact velocities.

There was an interesting glint off of the terrain near the head of the whale.

Click to view attachment

Going back to the Charon side which we will never see again (except in Charon light) I find the terrain extraordinary. Not to get too technical here, but the "wrinkles" look like MC Escher lizards. What are they? More interesting, the feature at 4 o'clock looks very different in this image, compared to others where it looks more crater-like. In the blow up on the far right, I have highlighted something that reminds me of the way Europa's cracks and surface displacements often overlay one another. Is the lighter material (highlighted as yellow) volcanic flows across the dark line (highlighted as red) that extends out from the circular feature? Others have already noted the doughnut-like look of several of Pluto's presumed craters.
--Charles

Click to view attachment

Nice 9throck, you've even got details in the atmosphere

I seriously doubt that.

Indeed.

Click to view attachment

Stunning and awesome.... both the sublime images of Pluto and the technological achievement.

Exactly 50 years ago on 14 July 1965 US time (15 July UTC) Mariner 4 made its own fly-by of Mars, providing our first close-up views of another planet.
Now New Horizons has completed the survey of all the planets we learned as children. What a project to witness in one lifetime!

Many congratulations to all involved.

I'm seriously joking Dan

Yeah, image processing artifact. Didn't they say this morning that the thin atmosphere is basically transparent?

Yes, doubtful.

Highpass will bring out ring artifacts, and create the illusion of a brightness along the limb.

On the other hand, the released image is not raw.
Certainly there was a circular selection made around the planet, to bring the lightness of the disk up, while keeping the background of the frame black.
Makes perfect sense for them to do that on an image that most people will see on TV, cellphone, etc, in well lit places.
So it's that selection that you are seeing, not the atmosphere. At least that's my interpretation.

I noticed that too.

But I haven't seen the bright spot in any other image, yet. It could be a hot pixel in LORRI.

You can see this in another LORRI image, right side, middle:

LORRI image

Sorry guys, had to deal with the police coming to my house because my SWEAR JAR EXPLODED!

Congrats New Horizons team, every day of those ten years was totally worth it!

I couldn't resist working on the latest pics just out of interest to see how much I could enhance the surface features to make them a bit clearer.... no pretence at scientific accuracy although the result doesn't look too bad...
Brilliant work by Alan Stern and the team. The realization of such a huge life goal after so many years hard unrelenting effort. What will power!!! Great to see 25% are women. The sooner it is about 50/50 the better.……Hᴜɢʜ….ツ
Click to view attachment

I think I'm seeing many small diameter craters, as predicted by some impact models.

I hope I'm wrong, because a lack of craters would mean an active, dynamic surface.

I'm sure the planetary scientists will be analyzing the data for years. Stay tuned.