New high-res. photos from the flyby in color:
We’ve known for almost 15 years that Pluto was “mostly brown”, but it’s better at high resolution
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010319.html
Stunning landscapes, it’s a pity that the flight profile didn’t allow for orbital insertion, some of those features are just screaming to be looked at in more detail.
In Britain (and other such places), Pluto is now in COLOUR!
It’s been a LOOOOONG time since I was up on space exploration; could someone answer me where the light is coming from to see anything on Pluto, let alone to get those beautiful pix? Thanx.
The Sun.
New Horizons carried some of the most powerful spotlights ever mounted on a space probe. That could be it. Or possibly the Sun.
From the Sun. Pluto is far out, but it’s not like it’s in eternal darkness at all points of the spectrum.
nm
Just to elaborate, you can see at night by starlight even when there’s no moon. The stars are immensely farther from Earth than the Sun is from Pluto.
The Bad Astronomer says that the Sun from Pluto is 1,500 times fainter than it is from Earth, but it’s still 250 times brighter than the Moon as seen from Earth.
^ Thank you, Colibri, just the answer I was looking for. Now I just have to wrap my mind around it.
There’s something to help you with that, NASA created the Pluto Time web page, you go there, set your location and it will tell you at what time of the day the amount of daylight is the same as noon on Pluto.
That last picture looks like a crashed Klingon warship. Just sayin’.
No effin’ way! Thanks, Ale, très cool.
Man, that’s a lot of light! I.AM.STUNNED!
Perfect! That’s a brilliant (no pun intended) way to conceptualize it! My recollection of that time of the morning here at this time of year is the first signs of dawn peeking over the horizon, not night any more but just beginning the transition to day.
Where I’m located (Houston), noon-on-Pluto was 7:08 this morning and I happened to be up. It was so bright, I could have been mowing the grass (you didn’t know Pluto had grass, did ya? Live and learn.).
I’m just glad our space program wasn’t about 80 years more advanced. Otherwise we would have visited Pluto back when the universe was still just black and white.
Never mind
They have released an amazing picture of Charon.
Looks like the moon is nearly split in half, the working theory is that it is the result of contraction of the moon as it cooled causing the crust to crack and water based “lava” flowed to the surface covering the lower hemisphere.
I suppose it could also be the result of a large impact melting the crust too.
There are a couple interesting features in the picture (besides the ginormous ridge across the entire moon), one is the very odd “sunken” mountain near the edge at the 4 o’clock position.
The other is what, to me, appears to be a large chunk of crust that has drifted a considerable distance; it’s the “island” to the right of the large, flat bottomed crater at the center.
It’s actually a lot brighter on Pluto than I imagined. I don’t know why I always pictured other planets being as bright as the dead of night here. Even the Moon, which I knew was wrong. It’s just how I pictured it.
Maybe it’s because planets/moons with no atmosphere will have a black sky no matter how bright the sun might appear? When I see moon pictures with a black sky in the background, I sometimes slip into thinking that it’s a photograph taken at night under artificial lights.