by Grania
Then vs. Now #PlutoFlyby pic.twitter.com/MGSF5eU1NS
— Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) July 14, 2015
NASA is still waiting on color data from New Horizons, but so far there is a wealth of information received from the epic journey out to the Kuiper Belt.
It all started here.
About 9 ½ years ago, the @NASANewHorizons launched from KSC. Today, the spacecraft makes history with its #PlutoFlyby pic.twitter.com/VsFlm1H3A3
— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) July 14, 2015
and was aiming for this.
YES! After over 9 years & 3+ billion miles, @NASANewHorizons #PlutoFlyby was at 7:49am ET. http://t.co/Czrvonxugd pic.twitter.com/aSucgORofT
— NASA (@NASA) July 14, 2015
If you’re interested in following the latest findings, NASA has an image gallery set up which is constantly added to here.
Here are some of the most remarkable new images.
Charon, Pluto’s moon is as exciting as the dwarf planet itself.
NASA notes:
Charon’s newly-discovered system of chasms, larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth, rotates out of view in New Horizons’ sharpest image yet of the Texas-sized moon. It’s trailed by a large equatorial impact crater that is ringed by bright rays of ejected material. In this latest image, the dark north polar region is displaying new and intriguing patterns. This image was taken on July 12 from a distance of 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers).
There are now some geology features to work with, it’s not known what they are yet.
NASA notes on this:
The spots appear on the side of Pluto that always faces its largest moon, Charon—the face that will be invisible to New Horizons when the spacecraft makes its close flyby the morning of July 14. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, describes this image as “the last, best look that anyone will have of Pluto’s far side for decades to come.”
The spots are connected to a dark belt that circles Pluto’s equatorial region. What continues to pique the interest of scientists is their similar size and even spacing. “It’s weird that they’re spaced so regularly,” says New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, is equally intrigued. “We can’t tell whether they’re plateaus or plains, or whether they’re brightness variations on a completely smooth surface.”
And here’s the amazing picture from the final approach to Pluto and Charon.
Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Here’s a video of the team counting down and celebrating.
UPDATE
NASA is doing a Reddit at noon ET , Facebook at 2pm ET & Twitter at 6pm ET “Ask Me Anything” Q&A session.
Tweet questions to @NASANewHorizons #askNASA
Nice. Thanks for the update.
Very nice, and thank you. I have been keeping tabs on the NASA site. I am not sure why we do not see many craters yet, but perhaps the resolution is not up to it in the latest pictures. If it turns out there are fewer craters then the surface is young for some reason.
I think Alan Stern, the PI of the mission, was referring to that in this morning’s press conference. If I recall correctly, he was saying that Charon and Pluto look different, with one showing an older surface. That’d be interesting. He also said it was too early to tell yet if there’s tectonics on Pluto – they’ll need to wait to get all the flyby data. Exciting times!
Very nice indeed. I’m looking forward to more interesting pictures from NASA.
All of this is extremely cool.
Sorry, I had to stop watching just after Dwayne said “It’s – about – America”. No hard feelings, guys, but if anyone should be over nationalism…
“USA! USA!” they chanted immediately after the closest point of approach. Were staff put upon by management/politicos to so ululate? I don’t recall the Mars rover teams carrying on in such a way, beyond a rejoicing of accomplishment which no one could fault.
Are there any “furriners” on the team?
Does anyone predisposed to fervent nationalism chafe at the idea that it is the INTERNATIONAL space station?
I think it’s good for all to be occasionally reminded that the genius behind the Apollo program was previously the motive force behind he Nazi V-2 rocket.
I saw today on PBS that CERN has discovered the “pentaquark,” if I correctly recall. (I wonder on what page the NY Times will put that.) Do any (former) congressmen regret not funding the Super Collider in the vicinity of Waxahachie, TX?
At least they didn’t sing “Onward Christian Astronomers!”
Haha!
From NASA’s web site, “Designed and integrated at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland — with contributions from companies and institutions in the United States and abroad — ”
“Contributions” just don’t count I guess.
Nifty. So little is known about these relatively close parts of the universe …
There’s even some speculation that Pluto might have one of those internal oceans we suspect exists on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
I didn’t realize Charon was so close to Pluto…at least it looks like it from the photos…maybe an illusion. Since a smaller planet would have less gravitational force, would that make satellites orbit closer? This is really cool stuff.
They are just over 19,600 km apart.
I think it is more the fact that they are extremely close in size. Some people have referred to Pluto and Charon as a double dwarf planet system – i.e. you’re expecting a moon to look significantly smaller, but in this case it isn’t, so the distance between them looks as if it were smaller.
~Grania
They are the closest pair of planetoids (being neutral in the un-debate) KNOWN in the Solar System, and they’re far less than 1/10 of the Earth-Moon spacing. Unsurprisingly, both Moon-Earth and Charon-Pluto are tidally locked, thoough to go one step further, Earth is not rotationally locked to the Moon, though Pluto is rotationally locked to Charon.
If you’re looking for an unambiguous distinctin between “close” and “not close”, That tidal locking may be it. Or the rotational locking of primary to secondary (in which case, Earth and Moon are not close).
But where would astronomy be if all definitions swept their area of the space of all ppossible similar definitions?
Whoa…
I believe this picture shows actual separation. They are quite close together compared to Earth and our Selene, but not as close as the dual-subject photo above suggests.
The distance of the orbit would follow Kepler and Newton. I think you could say you need to know the masses and the speed to know the distance. Or vice versa. I think I heard that, while the center of revolution of Earth-moon is inside Earth, the center of revolution of Pluto-Charon is somewhere in the space between them.
The barycenter.
Thanks for the barylink. All you need to know…and more.
The images coming back are stupendous!