A frozen CO2 sea perhaps? How would it have been liquid in the recent past (since it's not very cratered)?

-kap

Ice wedge polygons in the latest image?

http://permafrosttunnel.crrel.usace.army.m...ned_ground.html

Oooh, that looks like a good terrestrial analogy!

CO2 could not be in a liquid phase at Pluto surface pressure. It can't be in a liquid phase at terrestrial surface pressure. N2 a better candidate.

All I got is:

And the very dark spots inbetween the polygons..............

and again not a single crater in sight

500T of N2 per hour escaping.

That's insane for a body this small. How can it possibly have an atmosphere?

My off-the-cuff thought for the smooth plains are that they're formed by ice sublimation.

Hills in troughs, where have I seen that before...?

Wind streaks!

Evidence of Aeolian processes--wind streaks!

Totally insane data! It's been 3 days since the flyby and everyday is pure discovery. As Alan said: "They kept the best for the end".

I love the fact that for his press conferences, Alan *always* saves the best for last. Each presentation is omg....OMG....O M G.... O! M! G!

I know they aren't speculating yet, but those dark spots look awfully alot like vents!

I never dreamed Pluto/Charon would be this interesting; these findings should really put impetus behind understanding the KBOs generally.

I was really hoping for more discussion on the Charon mountain, looks like they aren't going to speculate here.

These early-looks are as good as V2 Triton imagery, much better to follow= W O W.

These are only the "middle resolution" pix? Seeing the highest resolution images is going to be really amazing!

I'm just curious. How Pluto's flyby rank among other also exciting discoveries from past missions?

No good way to answer that question. Each new mission provides its own suite of surprises. That's the beauty of it all.

Better than the spokes at Saturn definitely, maybe better than the volcanoes on Io. Sorry Jason!

The current "close-up" images are from this mosaic:

July 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.

But these mosaics are coming:

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.

With resolutions 3.3 and 5.4 times greater than what we have seen so far.

Pluto is awesome... but nothing will ever trump this image

With those polygons, it's looking like Mars again.

I believe you mean *this* image, but I think these new shots trump even my pics!

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science...amp;image_id=58

Nix in my very rough processing.

I was at JPL for the neptune/triton flyby with new exciting realtime pictures being beamed down constantly - it was absolutely amazing and Triton's surprises were jaw dropping, That said - Pluto is great too but the year wait is hard. I wish NASA would spring for scan platforms again!

Emily just asked a question (ably answered by Alan) about image release policy/frequency. Looks like a weekly schedule albeit August will be predominantly non-imaging science data coming down.

She's got your backs, imagewizards.

Nix, 10× enlarged.

They did fail to point out that the scale's very different. Miles rather than meters.

The regions to the west of the heart look incrediby complex.

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/th...oxide_pluto.jpg

Are there better global pictures than the one we already have in the download queue?

The geysers on Triton were only discovered by scientists, after scrutinizing images, weeks or months after the Voyager flyby. So the scan platform was great, but I would say I wish Voyager had New Horizons cameras (much much better resolution).

I was working during the presser and y'all are making all these wonderful comments, but no links to any images. Are they not available yet except as illustrations during the presser? In other words, how can I see what y'all are drooling over?

-the other Doug

Some of those dark boundaries look like miles wide bubbly foam.

Edit: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-n...f-pluto-s-heart

Hard to beat, that's a fact!

Interesting to hear NH team frankly talking about ongoing activity right now.

Also, the escaping atmosphere and possible erosion (loss of mass) by sublimation does sound as if Pluto was a gigantic comet (similar bulk components, ellongated orbit, etc.).

Here is one image.

Upthread are lots of footprint images showing where we can expect future images to come from. Don't forget, these are the super-lossy compressed JPEGs - much worse than "low" quality on a camera. Once we get the uncompressed data, much of the blockiness will crisper.

A scan platform wouldn't help NH much. Instrument data rates near closest approach were vastly higher than the average 2 kbps downlink speed so recorders would have been necessary anyway and the playback would still be drawn out for weeks.

Ah! Brace yourself for quite extremely exciting new terrain! For some reasons the image looked better on video that what is updated.

It was a good idea to take a day off today!

@Fran: I had the same impression. Hills looks like some material trying to find its way out from the throughs.

Are comets as rocky as Pluto is?

Colorized version of the plains. Its difficult to tell exactly where this is placed on the global view so coloring is likely off.

[removed image]

I'll see if I can do a better clean up job later this evening.

Full resolution image here.

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Edit
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I think I was off by a little bit the first time. Here's a quick second try.

Click to view attachment


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Edit 2
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This is further extrapolated color data based on the image above.
Click to view attachment

It's remarkable that of all the worlds in the solar system Pluto's size or larger, the last two that we got to see up-close were Titan and Pluto. That's finishing the fireworks show with a grand finale!

Is the full resolution of the mosaic up? I all find is the video. I want to properly see what the dark terrain looks like.




Well, gravity is scaled down.

The surface struck me more as (resembling) boiling water than polygonal cracks. It will be interesting to find out exactly how the 'bubbly foam' became concentrated in the troughs.

Also, there is the subtle shading in the middle of many of the cells.

Sputnik Planum - Is this in the area of carbon monoxide concentration?

Really rubbing it in to poor Eris, eh?

These bubbly plains in Tombaugh Regio remind me of – the Sun. That is, the granules seen upwelling at an extremely rapid rate. Obviously, there's no similarity in terms of, well, a lot of things, but I wonder if the dynamics are similar, but in super slow motion on Pluto.

Video of the Sun's granules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Scoj4HqCQ

I was surprised to hear that it was going to take so long to restart PU238 production.

Actually I remember the press conference. Luckily the internet backed me up - August 28, 1989. Larry Soderblom during the conference described it as a "crazy idea" but said one of the coldest objects in the solar system may have active geysers. The flyby would have been August 25, 1989. So, three days after flyby geysers were the leading candidate.

Andy