Speaking as a lazy biochemist, I've noticed that old, polymerised cyanide solutions make a nasty brown/black gunky mess. Digging around in the literature I found the following: "Adv Space Res. 1992;12(4):21-32. Hydrogen cyanide polymers on comets." I wonder if similar will be found on Pluto.

I just reviewed Dr. Alice Bowman's reply to what the "Phone Home" signal is question. You can find it at 30min 55sec of the record of today's press conference, see Post #210 by Req.

If I interpret it correctly, a lot of critical engineering and status data will be sent. Receiving it obviously means the spacecraft has survived its passage through the Pluto system. I have no idea if the data includes the amount of occupied memory, but that data point does make sense to me.
Fernando

EDIT: The signal has crossed Neptune's orbit and should be crossing Uranus' orbit in about 32 minutes.

Had a go at colorizing the latest LORRI image with the latest Ralph image. I morphed all the elements into place best that I could (in a reasonable time frame).

Click to view attachment

And another guess at a more realistic surface.
Click to view attachment

Any ideas on the right half of the 'heart'? Frozen oxygen?

According to the research I've read, tholins (the common non-iron reddish materials in our solar system) are believed to be predominantly PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) - planar and/or linear chains of hexagonal carbon rings, with the rings ranging from cyclohexane to benzene - and their derivatives. Not that that's a bad thing - PAH ring spacings are the same spacings as nucleotide spacings in DNA and RNA, and flat molecules (like nucleotide bases) preferentially stick to them versus non-flat molecules - so it's been suggested that PAHs might have been a scaffolding for the development of early life.



I already covered this on... I believe page two of this thread. The thickness of a floating ice cover required to reach nitrogen's triple point is not that incredible. It's the weight equivalent of less than a meter of ice on Earth. Floating ices on a liquid can be a frozen form of the liquid itself (with a small
amount of pore space to remain buoyant) or ice of a lighter species.

Possible images of stige and cerber0 moons?
And possible a more dense atmosphere and pressure and surface liquid material in other time of pluto year?

The orbit ranges from about 30AU to about 49AU. We're currently at 33AU, so much closer to the perihelion than the aphelion. I tend to think that in terms of densest atmosphere, we are pretty close to that phase now.

My impression is that the atmosphere is about as dense as it ever gets right now, 24 yrs past perihelion. Should be cooling off now & most of it will freeze out. I don't think that sustained fluid phases of any liquid are likely on the surface.

However, as Nafnlaus observed, subsurface N2 aquifers seem quite feasible, and that probably goes for several other types of substances.

EDIT: Sorry, Aldebaran, was writing the same time you were!

Remember that people generally assumed that Titan's Xanadu was elevated, and then, lo (pun intended), it turned out to be a depression. I'm not sure about Pluto's Heart yet, but its western boundaries suggest to me that it's elevated, with outflows that are locally narrow, but spread wider as they peter out. But that's not totally evident: The same shape might result from subsurface flows into a basin that cause collapse at the heads of the inflow channels.

The western Heart certainly appears remarkably featureless, so some sort of flow happened or is happening faster than other processes. Maybe dust or fluid fill a basin; maybe outflow from an unseen source has flowed out very smoothly.

Maybe extensive frost deposits if it is indeed a low-lying area. The stereo imagery will prove very helpful here.

Considering thermal lag and that we are just past periapsis, absolutely.

ThanKS aldebaran and nprev;
You have a graphic with all gas or materials that become in liquid at determinate temperature and pression?
Many Thanks
daniele

MOD NOTE: Please try using Google to search for phase diagrams for likely materials such as N2 & various simple carbon compounds.

Second attempt with newly released MVIC image with exaggerated false colors.
LORRI image was denoised.

I think the latest thought is Pluto's atmosphere never freezes out completely, based on fitting observations to recent models.

It's exciting to think NH just sailed through the traces of the upper atmosphere today, so we'll have better constraints on the 3 models mentioned in the paper. I think it will be interesting to see if/how Charon interacts with Pluto's atmosphere.

So exciting!!!!

Does it state anywhere which filters did Ralph use for the false-colour image? i.e. are they infrared/visible/UV wavelengths, or are they just visible colours enhanced in saturation?

~~~

I've balanced the coloured LORRI image in PhotoShop (using "Auto Color") and then increased saturation, to hopefully show the varied composition of the surface in the visible spectrum:

Click to view attachment

I think that the bluish areas are frozen gasses like methane or CO, while the reddish areas are thick concentrations of hydrocarbon "sludge".

Sorry if this has been asked, but was there supposed to be a "failsafe" LORRI image of Charon? I haven't seen it released yet.

I think so, and others have asked about it as well. I haven't seen it.

MVIC uses blue, red, near infrared and methane filter (also in infrared part of spectrum).
So those are definitely not visible colors enhanced by saturation.
My version has colors pushed more to the blue part of spectrum and it's interesting that this doesn't changed Charon's appearance.
Based on that I suppose that they used one of the infrared filters as red color.

OMG! Thanks for pointing that out. I've just uploaded a corrected pic. I was doing this at 1.30 am in the middle night, with half my brain thinking that
I had to get up early the next morning! My bush story is that Central Australian spelling is known for its 'phonemic elasticity'!! ……Hᴜɢʜ….ツ

I think it is very likely that similar will be found on Pluto. Some comets come from the Kuiper Belt. I'm not really comfortable with calling them hydrogen cyanide polymers. In organic compounds, C-N groups are called nitriles, as I'm sure you know. Acrylonitrile is a feedstock for manufacture of a common plastic called ABS, which I think is what the keys I am typing this are made of.



PAHs contain sheets of C atoms made up of 6 membered rings, with a special type of bond called a delocalized bond. Compounds with these delocalized bonds are usually called aromatic compounds. PAHs tend to be black compounds, and are common in crude oil, asphalt, soot and burnt toast. I'm sure that tholins contain plenty of aromatic rings, but I don't think they are directly equivalent to PAHs.

The problem I have with the floating ice idea is that the ice needs to be free of cracks in order to hold pressure. Naturally formed ice and rocks tend to contain abundant cracks.

[quote name='Don1' post='223394' date='Jul 14 2015, 10:52 PM'
The problem I have with the floating ice idea is that the ice needs to be free of cracks in order to hold pressure. Naturally formed ice and rocks tend to contain abundant cracks.[/quote]

Not at all. Does Europa's ice need to be free of fractures for the subsurface ocean to exist? If a crack in such a situation forms, liquid will fill it and freeze.

Pluto sure looks like a place where aeolian "ice" transport has been taking place, most likely with multiple ice chemistries. One thinks of the South pole of Mars, where water ice is overlain with carbon dioxide ice.
The west half of the "heart" resembles a giant impact basin that has accumulated one type of ice, with another type alternately condensing and subliming. The east "heart" and area to the south seem to have aoelian-flow-like bright areas (deposits?). related to the western "heart".
As far as tectonics goes, there is a tiny solar tide, but there might be some induced forces as the moons adjust to the (very slow) precession of Pluto's axis. (Anyone have the precession period handy?) This also affects which hemisphere has summer during perihelion, and how long that takes to switch.
Pluto is real, and wierd to boot!

Another look at the Heart, and why it seems so puzzling: I'm starting to think that flow occurred, strangely enough, in both directions, inward and outward.

The interpretation I'm starting to favor is that the western Heart is a basin. Dark intrusions on the northwest border may indicate that viscous flows came down into it, liquid enough to flow, but viscous enough to remain elevated relative to their surroundings to each side.

Then the bright material making up the current surface of the western Heart filled it, embaying many of those dark peninsulas and even creating islands in places. That could be dust or liquid, but it was less viscous than whatever material makes up the dark peninsulas.

Europa's ice cover is much thicker than a few meters, and yes it does need to be free of fractures for the subsurface ocean to exist. Leaks may well be self sealing, because the escaping liquid will cool as it vaporizes and will turn into a mixture of ice and vapor.

That raises the question of how thick the ice cover has to be for it to be self sealing? The pressure needed for liquid nitrogen on Pluto is quite a bit higher than the pressure needed for liquid water in warmer regions of the solar system.

And by now, 23:38 UTC, the Phone Home signal should have crossed the orbit of Saturn
Less than 75 light-minutes to reception

Fernando

Solid materials can undergo plastic deformation. Water ice does it in glaciers and ice sheets. Organic polymers are notorious for this kind of behavior.

Great images again ZLD. I had a look back at those experimental images you posted and a few of the features picked out well on those images can be sen as real on todays fabulous image. In particular at the boundary of the giant bright foot (not heart anymore), where there were strong indications of some mountains along the western edge of the bright region and a clearly evident crater nearby. This image shows that area. If that really is a mountain as the shadows suggest, it must be huge, miles high, along with the cliffs along the edge of the whales head. What could force the surface of a basically flat world that high?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124013840@N06...eposted-public/

Even in this image that gleam noted by others stands out. Given the Sun angle my thought is its just a small exposed bit of icy subsurface, where maybe more rapid sublimation has displaced the thin coating of dust/organics as suggested occurs on the surface of 67P.

It was suggested above, maybe the "foot" is where Charon impacted Pluto. If it was a glancing contact moving South to North, a gouge in the terrain would form like a Halfpipe ski course and surface material pushed ahead in an irregular hemisphere raising up a huge cliff, the toes of the foot. This low lying, cold basin would rapidly become filled with freezing super volatiles, if really deep, even liquids with ice on top. Being near the equator maybe it was too warm for Nitrogen to freeze, so preferentially Carbon Monoxide froze here. Interestingly the circular ice cream blob in the cone is almost directly in line with Charon on the far side of Pluto. As a result there would be an atmospheric tidal bulge in this area, increasing the thickness of the atmosphere and the vapour pressure at the surface. More reasons for increasing the fractional freezing of the atmosphere.

Others have also mentioned sublimation erosion and sublimation features. The features in dark area below the large mountain(?), in its shadow essentially, look exactly like those on 67P, but elsewhere in the whale feature, its almost featureless. Perhaps a little microclimate in the shadow of the cliffs is just right for sublimation to occur of a particular molecule, Neon maybe. I am pretty convinced now the dark equatorial regions are akin to desserts such as Death Valley, deep depressions in the shadow of mountains, where radiation has created a thick coating of complex organics, PAHs as mentioned and Thollins, are likely candidates. It will be interesting to compare the spectra to the dark surface of 67P or Ceres, I have a feeling they will be similar. The dark, energy absorbing, insulating surface covering, inhibits sub surface sublimation and frozen volatile deposition. Essentially the surface remains unchanged and the dark surface layer very, very slowly, gets darker and thicker.

Finally to the false colour image. The pale blue areas look to me to be recent frost deposits, maybe of Nitrogen, they appear to be located in the colder valleys between the darker hills and ridges, where sublimated ice has left organics and dust residue, which helps keep these higher areas slightly warmer by absorbing more sunlight. The topology and illumination conditions appear to be critical in controlling the fractional freezing and sublimation of the different species within Pluto's atmosphere. Pluto is a giant experiment in fractional distillation of super volatile ices, if that makes sense with no liquid phase involved.

Guessing that the color image is IR R B , I've processed it as R (G=0.5R+.5B) B and I get this:

Click to view attachment

Levels adjusted so that brightest ices are white. Certainly looks less psychedelic!

July 15 00:16 UTC, the Phone Home signal should have crossed the orbit of Jupiter.

NASA TV transmission should be starting soon.

Fernando

She said the phone home signal will indicate which sequences ran ok, whether there had been any computer resets and the amount of the recorder used.

I believe the NASA TV program has been shifted back an hour, so won't be starting for more than an hour. The description of the program was also changed, from some general description to saying it would specifically be a press conference.

-the other Doug

Still shows as starting at 0030 GMT on the website. Promo for coverage on now.

EDIT: Confirmed. Placard for Phone Home on NASA TV now.

EDIT2: Verbal announcement that program will start in 2 min.

Interesting -- I saw an update on the NASA TV landing page a couple of hours ago saying it was changing to 01:30 UTC. Well, we'll see what happens, unsure what they're going to say with another more than an hour before we hear if NH phoned home.

-the other Doug

Some new images would be nice

I'm also wondering about the "dunes" that were hinted at in yesterday's image, but seemingly absent from today's image?

Click to view attachment

2 mins to start of program.

It was mentioned during one of the news feeds that 8Gb (2 x 4Gb) of memory had been filled following the last transmission.

Coverage starting now.

Now's also a chance to see just how fast EOTSS; one tab with it and another with the stream.

I would be very surprised if we see any surface on Pluto that dates back to the impact that created Charon. Charon has a fair number of craters, so any surface on Pluto that's that old should also be covered with craters.

Maybe the Charon impact created some enduring internal structure, but the surface has to be newer than that everywhere that we've seen so far.

July 15, 00:46 UTC, the Phone Home signal should be crossing the orbit of MARS, just 4 minutes before the signal arrives at the DSN Madrid antenna.

NASA TV transmission is ongoing.
Fernando

Carrier lock.

Interesting video of nitrogen freezing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0rK2bLTimQ

Seems to have a somewhat violent behaviour at phase change - could be an agent in a weathering process.

See attached phase diagram for reference (it would be nice to see how it extends down to microbar pressures)

Click to view attachment

Data lock!

Telemetry coming in! Subsystem status coming....

No safe, good data!

CNDH reports expected amount of data collected.

GREEN BIRD ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!

The speed of light seemed so low today. The wait is over. Congratulations!

What a relief

Signal received. Carried LOCK. Everything looks good and the spacecraft is healthy, reports Dr. Alice Bowman.

HUGE congratulations to the team and thanks for having has along.
Fernando

Looking good. I wonder if Alice expected to be in the public spotlight so much.