Difficult to see with all those compression artifacts at the base of the mountain. I guess we'll have to wait for the lossless data.

It definitely does not appear to be even remotely related to the feature on Charon.

Click to view attachment

Way to early to claim certainties at this point and the way your model was made, while very interesting(!) it does not constitute an accurate picture of the landscape.

As for the formation on Charon, I'm going to throw my hat into the ring as it being a cryovolcano that has began to sink into the subsurface cryomagma chamber after it had emptied. There appears to be some faults of sorts around it which would suggest that this area sits on or sat on a liquid layer which could produce this result. Or it could be that an impactor caused enough local heating to aggravate and liquify a pocket of volatiles below the surface causing them to erupt out, but possibly only filling the crater, explaining the lack of flows in the surrounding area (back to Ceres ideas for this one).

I find the Proteus images hard to interpret, but it does have one large crater on it, which implies either that it has some ancient surface or it received one very improbable hit more recently. I think the evidence suggests that Proteus has an ancient surface and it simply wasn't imaged very well.

It's odd that we now wish we had better imagery of a "boring" airless body.

Umbriel is heavily cratered, so we know that small, airless bodies that far out can have ancient surfaces, but it's funny how we don't have any really-clearly-imaged examples further out.

Which prompts thoughts of that KBO flyby in 2019. It'll be interesting now to see if its surface is heavily cratered or not.

Many of those faces look like crystal edges at this resolution. These mountains of "rock" hard Water Ice should barely erode, if at all, for most of Pluto's orbit. Where the Water ice mountain is contaminated with super volatiles, there is the odd sublimation pit, where sublimation residue, dust and organics collect. Energy absorption might be increased enough to start Water sublimation outwards from initially small bubbles of volatiles. Some have faces so near vertical and so thin they look like shards of plate glass edge on in the ground. The only formation I can think of as an analogy is eroded lava or granite intrusions. Has Pluto's surface layer of ices in this area eroded, or been physically removed, to the point where intrusions from a once liquid water ocean in Pluto's past, are now exposed at the surface?

Anybody know how much the greenhouse effect of the Methane in Pluto's atmosphere affects things, either locally or globally?

That is starting to seem more and more important from a crater record standpoint.

Andy

Yes, the Proteus images are hard to interpret since they are few and of very low quality. In fact there is only one 8 km/pixel and one 1.3 km/pixel image (plus a few images of lower resolution). These images are low contrast and noisy and most of the features on Proteus' surface are only 2-3 DN above the background brightness. But Proteus is believed to be (and appears to be - but the images are bad) heavily cratered.

It's interesting that one result of the Pluto/Charon flyby seems to be that suddenly Uranus' satellites (plus maybe Proteus and Nereid) are becoming a whole lot more interesting than they seemed to be a few days ago.

I was wondering about this yesterday and subsequently forgot until I saw the closeup of Pluto on the JPL Photojournal. Does any know why there is a discrepancy in the resolution from the LORRI native? Is this just a slightly blown up partial frame? I wasn't aware they were only intending to download partial frames if so. I suppose this would maybe explain the long image from Charon as well then?

The image was released at 1041 x 742. Downscaled down to meet 1024 pixels across, it leaves 294 pixels, or more than a 4th of the data in this image missing from the height. Makes me wonder if they are holding something major back at the moment while they study it.

The image is near the limb, the rest could be black space.

Many of the released images (in particular the global ones in the days/weeks befiore the flyby) have been resized/enlarged during processing. My guess is that we are simply seeing a combination of a 'windowed downlink' and resizing during processing.

They did address the question, the answer was they need more images to be able to do a crater count, to help address the question.

This, to me, looks to be a mountain with a mass-wasting debris-apron surrounding it.

When I rotated the view to "normal" I had the impression of a lifted plate subducted under the far side of the crust it was excised from. There is not enough sensible detail for any of these observations, of course, but this adds a new viewpoint to the slate of candidates. All other "moat analogs" simply look like terminal moraines to me--a somewhat easier story for icy uplifts.

Correct me if I am wrong, but non of the images from NH are the full non compressed images, including the approach images, they are going to be downloaded later, correct ?

Here's the Charon terminator strip with added noise, slightly blurred and level adjusted.

Click to view attachment

Resemble a rock launched in a mud,
0r sunk in a mud. .

It is interesting that there appears to be a small crater right in the very middle of the "moat mountain". A lucky impact strike, or a partially collapsed cryo-volcano vent?

Charon bears quite some resemblance to the moons of Uranus. Maybe it was once, then along comes some wayward huge planetoid and turns Uranus on its side. Charon is in the wrong place and gets slung in a big long arc below the ecliptic plane eventually curving back up to scrape past Pluto and be captured. Pluto's axial tilt would certainly have been altered facilitating Charon"s capture nearer Pluto's new equatorial plane. Pluto's atmosphere at this time would have been a lot thicker, the planet warmer. A fair degree of aerobraking would have occurred on such a glancing surface impact and a great deal of heat put into Pluto's atmosphere, evaporating vast quantities of Nitrogen and Methane from the surface. Methane is a mega greenhouse gas, the temperature increases, more Nitrogen and Methane. Pluto's atmosphere could have been very significant for a long period after and the processes shaping the surface different from those we see now. That atmosphere would have kept Pluto warmer for longer. Hence it still appears to be unexpectedly active.

An entirely too fortuitous scenario? Not for Uranus.

I've uploaded an improved image.

Since I've added noise, the SN in the image is lower. I'd be extra cautious with any small details there.
The noise helps to mask the blocks, so that your brain is no longer distracted by them. But it can also "connect the dots" and create false details.

The two "mountains" on the very left edge about a quarter from the bottom also have very strange shadows. The sunlight is coming in from the left side of the image and casting shadows upwards towards the right. I would think the shadows would be somewhat triangular or pyramidal in shape with the isolation of the two peaks, but they both appear to have a circular shadow right at their "peak" area. Coincidence, or do these "mountains" have deep circular craters at their peak? I suspect they would be deep because otherwise we would likely only see a crescent with part of the pits illuminated.

-kap

(As others have noted): When you look at the magnified image the pixels get really obvious. Might have to wait for the hi-res pics to make very specific observations about smaller features.

Not that this helps a lot but below is a slightly sharper version of the Charon closeup largely based on your work 4throck.

Click to view attachment

About the shadows, we don't know if they are projected into flat ground.
If not, the shadows will look distorted, tilted, broken, etc.

A number of off-topic posts were moved to the 'NH Funnies and Other Stuff' topic.

The NOVA documentary is up, with some more general info:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/chasing-pluto.html

Poignant watching the computers and equipmentin mission control gradually modernize, and the team age, while their bird stays the same through the long cruise.

Ok, so today we are supposed to get more Pluto images.

The flat terrain below should be representative of the heart:

Click to view attachment

This becomes apparent when you look at context imagery (official one below):

Click to view attachment

The rightmost flat terrain in the first image above corresponds to the most pure white portion of the terrain in the white rectangle (the upper portion of it).

If we're lucky, we should get both of the two uppermost images represented by the red triangles today:

Click to view attachment

The one on the left shows a central portion of the heart, which I predict will be very flat with either minimal or highly scattered topography.

The one on the right should be one of the best views we get of the dark regions. According to the official context image, the left edge of the first close-up image we saw contains some dark terrain (the upper part of the first image in this post), and it looks like this area has significant topography, so I predict that this particular new image will show a terrain that is a lot rougher, perhaps with tall mountains; and if so, perhaps just as tall as the ones we've already seen.

Returning to the flat terrain, where have we seen something similar before? On Triton:

Click to view attachment


The similarity isn't exactly striking, but it's there. We cannot be done with Triton, yet.

Let me tell you: "Hello!" - from a long time lurker from Poland.

First, I would like to thank the creators of this amazing forum, the community, and all the people involved in space missions. Every, virtually every day you renew my belief in humanity.

The main reason behind my post is Pluto, of course. I have seen thousands of space images in my life - since those sent by Vikings to those very new from New Horizons and Dawn. I'm a physicst, a science journalist, I started my adventure with computers in 1980 and had a more than decade long adventure with computer graphics. But the longer I look at the latest Pluto picture, the more it amazes me. Please check the link below:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/126956613@N06...eposted-public/

Top left image shows something I think could be a real geological structure. Red ellipse on the top right image is a bit smaller, so you could compare the shape of proposed structure with real geological features. Bottom left image is an original image, and the lines on bottom right are a bit outside of the proposed feature.

Is it just my impression or it really seems like something real? If yes, I totally do not understand the processes responsible for its creation. It seems like a large, nearly perfectly circular piece of land has been moved a bit...

Unnecessary quoting removed - Admin

Unfortunately, I have no clue what you're seeing there. It looks to me like you picked a random spot in an image and drew a random-shaped oval.

Information on today's press briefing from NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC is at the link below. The briefing begins at 1PM EDT (Noon CDT / 11AM MDT / 10AM PDT, etc).

The images are already on the ground and have resulted in very emotional responses based on one report. Tune-in to see.


http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-...asa-tv-briefing


Andy

NOVA documentaries really are worthwhile seeing. Unfortunately, when I try to access it I get this message:

Click to view attachment
Does anyone know how to see them from Europe? Thanks
Fernando

Unnecessary quoting removed. - Admin
EVERYONE Please help us minimize forum clutter. If you are responding to the immediately preceding post there is no need to quote.

It's a feature of geolocate.
The website knows you're connecting from an overseas IP.
You'll need to use proxy to make a connection to the website using a US IP address.
It's not illegal.

You can try http://hola.org/

Welcome to the discussion! Those of us who are here as learners are blessed to have some patient teachers among us. This particular mission is both special and full of unexpected surprises. In coming months, New Horizons will tell many more new stories, I am certain.

The plains are part of something much larger, so I do not think that the portion inside your ellipse would ever have behaved differently from the same surface that we know extends well beyond. The dark region to the left, however, is part of something much larger. I am very interested in seeing more of the border between the dark region and the plains in one of the images that we should see later today. My impression is that the distinct, curved edge that your oval traces on the left side is probably due to embayment, or the overlapping of plains material over lower edges of the dark region, which forms a seemingly sharper contact zone. The slight line of detail that appears detached from that edge may be instead a long "island" of the dark material still higher than the lighter material that embays it. So I see it not as a lateral displacement but more like a tomography scan showing elevated features that just happen to have a curved shape. The problem is that we have no evidence yet as to which is the fresher material, so all of this is simply conjecture. When the new pictures arrive, I am curious to see any signs of how the features were created relative to each other in time.

We should be getting a three-frame mosaic of Pluto at the upcoming press conference, maybe... hopefully... Here's an updated version of that mosaic design (with July 13 background, and updated pointing):

Click to view attachment

The 2/3rds of a frame released Wednesday is the left most yellow frame of the three in yellow.

What's the point of the three almost empty frames that seem to point next to Pluto? Is it where Charon's going to appear from behind Pluto?

REMINDER: Next press conference in 30 min (1700 GMT/17 Jul) on NASA TV.

I colorized the LORRI picture released on Wednesday by aligning and merging this picture with the full-globe color picture of Pluto taken on 13 July. The red-tinted surface on the upper right side of the picture is an artifact of the colorization process due to a misalignment (the geometry of full-globe and flyby pictures is not the same).
Edit: I improved warping of color picture and colorization is much better now.

accounting for the uncertainty in the position of Pluto

Because there was some uncertainty about the position of Pluto during the planning of the mosaic, so they were likely added to ensure that the terminator was imaged.

It might be that at the time the mosaics were planned, expected uncertainty in Pluto's radial position was large enough so those footprints could have been "contingency" in order not to miss the near-terminator area where topography is pronounced. I could be way off, though.

EDIT: ninja'd by Paolo and volcanopele!

I think that is to cover any errors in aiming. As we know there was an aim point with a 60 mile error margin. NH was 72 seconds early and a few miles above dead centre of the aim point. This error is from then on fixed in NH's autonomous flight plan. The mosaic is designed to accommodate such initial fixed errors. We saw that the mosaic footprint was changed from the one on July 2nd to take into account a better knowledge of New Horizons actual trajectory relative to Pluto and Pluto's revised diameter, but once the automated flight sequence was uploaded about a week out, no further changes could be made to account for aiming errors.

However, note that the leaked image doesn't have those three terminator frames:
Click to view attachment

Briefing has begun.

Holy Crap, was that Brian May sitting with the New Horizons team?

For those who don't know who Brian May is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May

Edit: confirmed, they introduced him and he's talking now.

Edit 2: Can this be the New Horizons theme song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMLiqEqMQyQ -- Written by Dr. May

Yep!

Dr. Brian May!!!!!

Edit: to add STAR tracker image
Click to view attachment

They ARE the champions!!!!!!

Heart is CO ice. Only CO source on globe.

I have to collect my jaw from the floor!

High res of the Heart. Looks to me like drainage networks.

Large-scale polygonal fracturing?

Maybe that, but the curvy nature sure seems like fluid flows to me.