Very nice, thank you! Don't test on the live site, your PHP errors were showing!

Could you put a TARGET field on the index table? NH is now specifying whether the target is PLUTO or CHARON, and presumably the other moons may be targeted as well. It would be nice to see this right on the index table.

If you want to clean up that table, I would say that the compression, exposure, and missionphase fields are not really needed on the index table. It doesn't hurt to have them, but it makes the table too wide. Perhaps putting the Show Detail link on the left, instead of on the right, would help in that regard.

Again, thank you for the terrific index!

Learn something new everyday! I had always thought it was named after the ferryman from Hades, which would be appropriate since Hades is the ancient name of the underworld god: Pluto. Well disguised indeed!
Fenando

Bigger than Eris (1165 +/-6 km)

It's fun to combine Bjorn's maps into an animation showing how the resolution is increasing, from east to west:
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Jim Christie has a good account of the naming of Charon in this interview:

http://www.astronomy.com/year-of-pluto/201...t-double-planet

Phil

NASA has blocked the access to the root of the directories where images and metadata is stored, so the database won't be updating until I find a way to parse the web code.

New images of Pluto and Charon just released:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-big-is-plu...des-long-debate

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And that same webpage provide a new diameter value for Pluto, bringing Pluto back at the top of the list in the KBO family.

(The statement for the diameter of Pluto is 2,370 kilometers, Charon get 1208 km, for Nix there's an estimate of 35 kilometers, and Hydra at 45 kilometers.)

Much more details here! This looks like giant dark sand dunes.

These two sources don't seem to match up. The article linked above states:

and


EDIT: TheAnt just said the same thing.

My processing of 11 of July, 22:22. Factor x3, north is up.

Pluto:
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Charon:
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I had completely forgotten about the observation playbook! In that case, I can update my P_LORRI_STEREO_MOSAIC preview to show which frames will be played back this month (using the colors Emily used in her graphic earlier). So the Yellow frames are supposed to be played back Wednesday evening UTC, while the purple frames are supposed to be played back on the afternoon of July 20 UTC.

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Blake, maybe you're confusing radius and diameter? Diameter = Radius x 2

Just playing with contrast in the brighter areas of Pluto and the terminators to make details easier to see.

Phil

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1185km radius x 2 = 2370km diameter

I guess I'm missing what doesn't "add up"?

Andy

Astonishing detail on Pluto now, including apparent topography. There seem to be two distinct types of dark terrain. The part facing the camera looks like rugged highlands, but the part rotating into view at 7 o'clock looks flat, featureless, and much darker.

To my eye, the dark blotches on the Whale hemisphere seem to have smoothly curving boundaries, while the dark areas on the anti-Whale hemisphere seem to have more irregular boundaries. I'm curious now if that's because they're categorically different or if it's the same materials but differences in topography. (Such as the difference between the jagged coastline of Greece vs. the smooth coastlines of Florida.)

The same thought occurred to me, but surely those couldn't be dunes....

The prominent 'crater' and a couple other crater-like features look like impact craters that have been etched or 'deconstructed'. Come to think of it, the entire landscape along the lower latitudes appear to be heavily modified in such a manner. It is possible the highly-volatile ices were somehow driven off in these latitudes (leaving behind water ice 'residue'), while remaining intact in the higher latitudes?

Those grey splotches do look like dunes. We need more pictures to be sure.

This is a good observation. I bet when we see some color here, the two kinds of dark terrain end up being not quite the same color. Black and white can hide quite a bit of meaningful differences.

The vaguely hexagonal feature above the bullseye appears even more crater-like now at the limb.

That must be a crater on Charon at the 5 o'clock position. You can even see radial impact ejecta.

The crater on Pluto at the 4 o'clock doesn't show ejecta.

Pluto_Charon

If they are dunes on Pluto, what would cause them and what would they be made of?

Two craters actually. There's a smaller one to the right. But where are all the big impact basins? Charon is remarkably smooth.

still seeing evidence of fluid having flowed across the surface in the far gone past but we need closer pictures

The dark center and bright ejecta around the 'crater' on Charon reminds me of the craters on some of Uranus's moons.

You're absolutely right.

There seems to be a bump on the limb at 8 o'clock on this image:

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-s-...entral-meridian

If it's a mountain, it could correspond to an irregular, bumpy grey area somewhere between the large black
uniform area and smaller black patch at around 7 o clock position on the latest images

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/th...jhuapl-swri.png

Not seeing any evidence of fluid movement in my view, Steve. That topography looks more sublimation-carved than anything else.

If those are dunes, how tall could they get considering the surface gravity? Bigger than any on Earth?

Pluto's atmosphere contains various compounds of nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is struck by solar UV without protection from a magnetic field. As thin as that atmosphere is, and as weak as the UV is, that will still cause photochemical reactions, even if the rate of those reactions yields a vastly smaller total output than on, say, Titan.

A very small result accumulating for billions of years can still add up. And for a layer of dust to be visible, it does not have to be very thick – a micrometer is potentially enough to alter the visible appearance completely, just as a very thin layer of frost or snow can make something black on Earth appear white.

Titan is theorized to have aerosols drift downward and cover surfaces on the scale of centuries / millennia. Pluto might have a comparable result from a process that's, say, a million times slower, but over a period of time a million times longer.

Some linear-ish streaking visible near the upper limb:
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Looks like a bad comb-over.

They do remind me of certain streaky features on Triton. The 'head' of the prominent one appears to be very near if not directly on the north pole.

@JRehling, thanks for the response. I forgot to think of these bodies using large geological time scales.

Will Grundy, a planetary scientist and mission team member pretty much agrees with you and mentions the role UV light and cosmic rays could have played.

He also told Forbes early this year that:



Link to article: Pluto May Harbor Wind-Whipped Dunes Of Ice And Soot

Hmm. Diffidently, I must point out the dunes on 67P C-G. I suppose that the extent of a putative dune field may provide a discriminator between a formerly denser global atmosphere and the effects of local outgassing.

Here's a different view of the fly-by event information from APL's website. It visualizes all those events, instrument by instrument, overlaying DSN communication periods and NASA TV schedule. Filter by instrument in the legend, or search for keywords


http://utprosim.com/newhorizons/index.html

Certainly no doubt about the Copernican-looking impact crater on Charon from these latest images, clearly formed rays and all.

Thanks Phil. I can't help but now see Charon's large, dark patch as an impact basin with that 'outer ring' in your processed image. Conjecture I know, but still...

Less than 500,000 miles to closest approach, according to Eyes on the Solar System.

I am struck by how similar the topology is within the dark areas to that in the bright basin further north. They look "dunish", but the scale suggests, hills and ridges. The majority of the surface seems to be a series of ridges and valleys looping around and the diagram posted sometime back for super volatile deposition matches this terrain. This leads me to think the colour is organics/dust deposited on the surface, maybe as suggested above in only a thin layer of millimetres.

On the latest Pluto image down at 5 O'clock there are three huge mountains, just to the left we can see the beginnings of another dark area which is surrounded by cliffs many kilometres high. On the left rim at the start of the heart plateau we can see a huge elevation change up to the bright plateau. On the edges of the heart plateau as it runs down into the basin again a sharp cliff marks the edge of the bright heart material and the lighter grey of a second step down to the flatter expanse of the temperate latitude basin. [admin edit]

To Charon, the craters hinted at before are quite clear now. Also clear now is how much of a Plateau the Polar ice cap is. That big nick on the limb at about 1 O'Clock continues as a deep valley all the way around the polar cap and its far cliff can be seen at 11 to 12 O'Clock. More wildly it might be speculated that nick is evidence of a subduction zone around the polar cap. I still can't explain why the cap is so dark, how organics and dust could be preferentially deposited at the poles, other than they would be a "cold spot" for concentrating any freezing volatiles. This implies Charon has or once had a significant atmosphere, either its own or what it has pulled off Pluto. It may not have large numbers of craters, but it appears to be a gnarly and very rugged world.

So exciting...!

Curious about something: I'm looking at Bill Harris' post on the hi-res coverage http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8047&view=findpost&p=223020
(quick link to image here: hires coverage preview ).

The long diagonal path of the highest resolution pictures (which I believe we won't see until the Fall) appears to run "off" the illuminated portion of Pluto just as it gets to the dark southeast edge of the "heart" (see the map at the top of the image). Does that mean that that part of the surface will be in darkness when the images are taken? If so, what is the anticipated result? Or is that just a byproduct of the available rough Pluto image with the correct orientation?

I've seen the discussions of resolution constraints on the Charon-shine pictures to be taken after closest approach, but this would be a different beast, yes?

The New Horizon team was quoted in a tweet as saying that there are signs of "frost transport" in the images coming down. Something like this is probably responsible for the various surface features we now see on Pluto, as predicted earlier: "Occultation studies have shown that there has been a steady increase in Pluto's atmospheric pressure over the past two decades, so concomitant sublimation and recondensation of frost has likely occurred, as predicted by volatile transport models." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014EGUGA..16.4595B

I am starting to wonder if Charon has some Triton-esque terrain, too. Take a look..

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Not much solid evidence for many well-preserved impact craters, which is interesting.

[admin edit]

Agree. Only evidence for a few really big ones. That may be resolution or the smaller ones have been covered over or changed by resurfacing events.

Charon does look like a Uranian moon from this resolution. We already know it's similar in size and density as well. It would be wonderful if closeup images of Charon tell us more about them.

Just looked at the latest Charon image again and that "crater" at 6-7 O'Clock appears to me to have a plume of darker material in the direction of the limb and a generous observer might say a smoke trail similar to a volcano can be seen. Impact crater or Caldera, the old question when looking at lower resolution images, even higher ones from Ceres are not conclusive. While in such an extravagantly, unfounded, speculative vein, the vast long Chasm running from 4 to 6 O'Clock, a rift valley? Are there, or were there, continents of Water Ice moving on a mantle of slush made up of super volatiles. At this point Charon is turning out to be a real conundrum. Pluto seems to fit the favoured theoretical models quite nicely, nobody seems to have a good handle on what's going on at Charon.

I think Charon's going to be the biggest surprise from this flyby. I may be wrong, but perhaps we're looking at an icy version of Io here.

It may not be now, but before the two bodies became tidally locked, that is plausible I suppose. That might mean that what look like impact craters on Pluto might be ancient Calderas. especially the big circular features we saw on the Charon facing face a couple of days ago.

EDIT: It might also explain why Charon is so uniformly "coloured" and the darkness of the polar cap.

Charon looks somewhat similar to Uranus' moons, at least at this resolution. The chasm seems comparable to features seen on Ariel and Titania.


I can't see anything plume-like anywhere.

Meanwhile, on Pluto in the latest image (the one obtained at a distance of 2.5 million km), some of the terrain in the lower half of the image and left of center (at approximately 7 o'clock where there are alternating patches of bright and darker terrain) is starting to remind me a bit of the weird looking terrain seen in hi-res images of Mars' polar regions ("Swiss cheese features") where sublimation is a significant process. The only problem is that the Martian features aren't big and wouldn't even be close to visibility at the resolution of the most recent NH Pluto image.

Its amazing what you can do when if you write scripts (and get out of work early!)
Here are the 2nd set of images from July 11, 2015

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Here is yet another version of my map of Pluto, this time incorporating the recently released image that was obtained at a range of 2.5 million km (the one that can be found here at the NH website). Apparently it was obtained on 2015-07-12 at 08:46. As usual, longitude 0 is at the left edge of the map.

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The map now has much better coverage of parts of the terrain that will be imaged at high resolution tomorrow, including the northeast half of the bright region near the center of the map.

Thanks for that map. The bright terrains near the equator definitely look like the patchy ice cap margins we saw at Triton.