Big congratulations to the entire New Horizons team!
It's almost unbelievable what they did with such limited budget.

I hope they get the funding they need for an extended mission. The return in science and technology, as well as inspiring nations and people is worth it IMO.

By the way, data is now being downloaded from NH to Canberra 43 at 2.11 kb/sec.

Link: Deep Space Network

New Albedo/Color-info map of Pluto out in a polar projection: PIA19706

--Bill

It was interesting to compare Phil's high contrast version of 13 July image (reduced to 60%) with my newly reprocessed version from 7 July (enlarged to 600%). There's some match.

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I'm looking at the table of planned LORRI observations posted by machi in the previous thread, and it said that there was going to be an attempt to photograph Nix at 0.1 km/pix followed by an attempt to photograph Charon at 0.24 km/pix at around 11:15-11:20 UTC. Eyes On The Solar System also shows these images. Does anyone know anything about whether they were taken?

Did they just post the LORRI Failsafe image? It says July 13th 20 UT

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounte...sure=100%20msec

The "failsafe" LORRI image of Charon has been released at the raw image site

And this is that Charon image, enlarged and stretched. But it was Jpegged to death.

Phil

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I averaged the color of the 6 different "color" versions posted here, rotated it 139.05 degrees counterclockwise to align with the LORRI image, and used it to colorize the (simple level-adjusted) LORRI image using two different methods.
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In a sense, this was the average color interpretation posted on the forum, applied to the published LORRI image.

Re. Charon raw image: looks like there could be one of those supposed chasms to the right - here's hoping. Would be lame if Charon has dramatic chasms and we could see none of them in detail.

Strange, whats going on with the luminance? Light scatter in the telescope tube?

The closer we get to Charon the weirder the dark pole seems. Is it possible it's the equivalent of the lunar maria on the moon?

My rough and ready processing of the Charon raw frame from the 13th. Colorized with the MVIC false color release:

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Charon, 13th:
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Emily's twitter seemed to imply a little snark around that question, I hope she can elaborate with us.

I always chuckle at the questions given during these press conferences (except for Emily's!) - I always wonder if they even bothered to read all the available documentation that answers the vast majority of them. Maybe a UMSF rep needs to give them a briefing folder of our FAQs before each press conference.

Nasa media briefing 3pm ET The end to all Pluto myths and speculation s on UMSF!?

To be fair to the media, just because the reporter knows the answer already doesn't mean there isn't a reason to ask the question. When writing an article sometimes a quote is needed and the only way to get that is to ask the question. Of course for TV, having those responses is a large part of the 30 - 60 second piece.

But, you are right, there are members of the media (or at least those who got credentials) who don't bother to read the material or even worse, ask the exact same question that was already asked because that is what was written down on their notepads.

I agree with Emily's assessment. The kid's question was sharp and intelligent. A statement of fact is that it was more intelligent than some of the questions the general media has asked at press conferences.

Andy

Someone was asking about a very bright spot on Pluto yesterday. I speculated it could be a hot pixel in the camera.

The image posted by pitcapuozzo earlier also shows a hot pixel:

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So, be aware that this "too bright to be true" spot may be just that.

Here's the image pitcapuozzo posted earlier:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounte...0x632_sci_1.jpg

https://twitter.com/asrivkin/status/621352166360543233



https://twitter.com/rebeccamorelle/status/621326003621765120

Hmm...

Oh, definitely, because we had Mars all figured out after Mariner 7.

Following up on yesterday's colour discussion, here's the hue channel of P_LORRI_FULLFRAME_COLOR.png, with an extreme stretch:
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First of all, this really is an extreme stretch - the original hue pixel values vary by only 2 or 3 across most of the image. But I was originally puzzled by the features that look kind of like they're bordered by lines of "longitude" at the bottom and far left side of the disc. Now I suspect they may be the result of applying the colour from an image obtained earlier, when we had a bit of a different viewpoint, by projecting the earlier colour information onto this LORRI view.

<QUOTE>
Everyone here has rug burn from repeated jaw drops. The pictures I've seen are amazing. You guys are in for a treat. #PlutoFlyby
<\QUOTE>

I am scanning the net for rug burn treatment ideas in anticipation....

Consider me among the list of those "thoroughly teased"....

Charon, LORRI / Ralph, July 13

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Best guess at actual coloring

Thank you fredk for that inverse image you posted earlier, only then I could find all those craters I expected.
They were there all the time but eluded the eye, and needed your work to stand out. =)

I updated my "One Plutonian day" animation with the last LORRI pictures colorized with MVIC pictures. Resolution is dramatically increasing between frames!

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Congratulations, All of you, so great team, thanks for all, Alan, Alice, everybody. Thanks to be so smart, kind, and intelligent.
In these times, it is a fabulous example, and you will be, in future, mythic historic explorators of this legendary first age of space, when starships will go visit other stars.

Apologize for my poor English, but my French heart beats at rhythms of your music of science. Really, thanks again. I'm again a child of sixty. It's a mervellous gift. Thank you. Thank you !

we both know that there will be plenty of discussion now and in the future and that is what makes such missions of exploration and discovery exciting.

I think that's 7 to 13, isn't it?

I suppose that no one knows now. If it's not an error of NASA's Eyes then those images are part of the P_MPAN_1 observations of Pluto (70! images from the LORRI).
We must wait at least until September when majority of images will be downloaded as version with lossy compression (full quality images from November).

She's elaborated a bit in her Reddit AMA.

New tweet from the team.

I want to be smiling like they are, this press conference can't come soon enough!
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From NH Twitter:

"What are we smiling at? Trust us, DON'T MISS our 3pm ET briefing on @NASA TV! :-) "

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Darn it, they got the screen facing the wrong way

NH Twitter

ninja'd!

I.m sure, "our" magicians can get what's on the screen from the reflexion on John Spencer glasses.

The placement at the pole is curious. I recall that Sagan and his collaborators raised some interesting analyses of Titan and a possible global hydrocarbon ocean there (before we had a good look through the haze). They argued that a global ocean was not possible because tides would have circularized Titan's orbit, which is significantly elliptical. However, disconnected seas were possible, because that would reduce tidal sloshing.

As volcanopele mentioned earlier:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=223134

Now, I don't think Charon is a candidate for a sea of standing liquid, but the location of the dark spot at the pole makes me wonder if tides in liquid in a subsurface reservoir might have moved the pole to that location. And then some sort of outflow (and, presumably, freezing) might have led to a mare where we see it now.

On another note, I wonder if the placement of Pluto's Heart, near the anti-Charon point, is another case of asymmetry determining the final state of the system, just as the Moon's filled basins (and thinner crust) are preferentially located towards Earth. According to one analysis I read, it just as easily could have settled 180° away, with the basins facing away from Earth. (And how unlucky that would have been for poets!)

That's right, thanks! I corrected it.

"The placement at the pole is curious"

Not if it's related to insolation rather than geology.

Phil

I believe we'll find that much of the Pluto-Charon system's geomorphology is insolation-driven.

--Bill

I think the first batch of higher res images will cover part of the bright heart feature??

edit This tweet appeared a few seconds after my post https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/621386677630672896

Just got in from work and caught up with the latest results from the image magicians. WOW! I am not saying this is how it is, but several things struck me as being pretty obvious.

Charon hit Pluto to create the Carbon Monoxide ice cream cone or eight toed "Big Foot", Charon's footprint. Pluto has an icy surface of mainly Nitrogen, why the huge concentration of Carbon Monoxide in this one region? Charon however has lots of Carbon Monoxide and Water Ice. The red polar region of Charon indicates Thollins and hence Nitrogen. This is the only place on Charon where Nitrogen is concentrated. This is Nitrogen Ice scraped from the surface of Pluto. The pole at Charon is a huge depression with a central raised region covered in dark red. One side of the surrounding basin wall is missing, opposite the basin wall has a ring of mountains on top of it just like the toes on the "Big Foot".

This does not have to have been an ancient event, in solar system terms it may have occurred quite recently, the large debris from the collision is still around. Charon has huge cracks in its icy surface and a vast volcano at one of the intersections, with two others in the same area. The huge chasm we see, could be where one of the other satellites was cracked off the icy shell of Charon as it was cracked open by the collision.

Many have noted how akin Pluto and Triton are, except Pluto has the "Big Foot". Pluto once had dark equatorial band just like Triton all the way around, a deep depression formed as surface chemistry built an insulation layer on it. As Alex's coloured images graphically showed this chasm is filled in at the heal of the foot. The "splash" to the west has created a chain of ice mountains and cliffs. To to North and the toes, a hollow basin is surrounded by a massive ridge of crumpled up material pushed up and out of the basin.

Once Charon's surface graze had ended debris is scattered in a line all the way over the North Pole and down onto the far side where we see the frost filled remains of numerous craters down the central belt of the hemisphere facing Charon now. To the east of the "Big Foot" the splash is shallower and spead out and corresponds to the blue area in the false colour image. This a different composition from any other area visible in the image. This is probably Water Ice from Charon, heated by the energy and pressure of the collision to land, possibly as liquid on the Nitrogen Ice surface. The video of Nitrogen Frezing in a vacuum posted here, shows the shapes the nitrogen forms as it evaporates, water would flow into and melt depressions, like water on Greenlands Icecap, creating the landscape of hills and curvy valleys we see.

I would post more but I am fascinated to see what the team say. It looks so obvious to me. Excuse the grammar & spelling, I haven't had time to proof read.

The NH team is teasing people so bad right now on the NASA New Horizons twitter feed:)

2 minutes

Charon has been active!

-the other Doug

Charon has been active!!?

The image they just showed is amazing, tons of resurfacing must have occured.

-kap

Anyone else having audio problems? I am just hearing high speed clicks.

Click to view attachmentYep!

Wow...the grad student who thought they got the short end of the stick with the Charon assignment just got handed a nice thesis . . .

Hydra, 10× magnified.

Since it's mostly water ice, does that mean it could be a captured comet from even further out in the solar system?

-kap

No craters on high res picture.