Possible Polar Cap on Pluto

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA’s New Horizons Detects Surface Features, Possible Polar Cap on Pluto

For the first time, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto – the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.

The images were captured in early to mid-April from within 70 million miles (113 million kilometers), using the telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera on New Horizons. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.

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[Merc14]

New Horizons now has the best images ever of Pluto and Charon and sees what may be a polar cap on Pluto! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27444-land-ho-nasa-spacecraft-may-have-seen-polar-ice-cap-on-pluto.html#.VUJv5UUpBIA

[Waspie_Dwarf]

New Horizons Sees Pluto and Charon

This series of New Horizons images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken at 13 different times spanning 6.5 days, starting on April 12 and ending on April 18, 2015. During that time, the NASA spacecraft's distance from Pluto decreased from about 69 million miles (111 million kilometers) to 64 million miles (104 million kilometers).

The pictures were taken with the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI. Pluto and Charon rotate around a center-of-mass (also called the "barycenter") once every 6.4 Earth days, and these LORRI images capture one complete rotation of the system.

This video was created from an animated gif and has been looped five times.

Credit: NASA/APL/Southwest Research Institute

Source: NASA

Edited May 1, 2015 by Waspie_Dwarf
typo.

[Sundew]

This is really cool, can't wait until it gets closer!

[bison]

Very cool, indeed! Pluto is near perihelion, the nearest the Sun it comes in its highly eccentric orbit. It should have a temperature of around 55 Kelvin, which is minus 218 Celsius; minus 361 Fahrenheit. If it actually has polar caps they're presumably made of frozen nitrogen, or methane, or carbon monoxide, or a combination of these.

[fred_mc]

The sunlight on Pluto is quite weak so I think the temperature difference between the equatorial region and the polar regions would be quite small on Pluto, much smaller than on Earth. Therefore I find it a bit strange if there are ice caps or other features that only exist on the polar regions on Pluto.

Edited May 2, 2015 by fred_mc

[Maizon]

Looks like an asteroid, its not completely round.

[maximusnow]

Who knows what we will find as we venture closer, maybe another bright spot?

[Infernal Gnu]

The bright spot will turn out to be a huge sign the Plutonians have erected demanding that they be returned to full planetary status or they will direct thousands of Kuiper Belt objects towards the inner solar sytem.

[Machala2012]

I think the fac that Pluto is still getting its Air time is good, so many people forgot about it. Kids in school these days dont even really know about it. So Sad.