New Horizons Pluto Mission update thread

[Drone]

Pluto behaves less like a comet than expected and somewhat more like a planet like Mars or Venus in the way it interacts with the solar wind.

Previously, most researchers thought that Pluto was characterized more like a comet, which has a large region of gentle slowing of the solar wind, as opposed to the abrupt diversion solar wind encounters at a planet like Mars or Venus.

Since Pluto is the farthest planet in the solar system and because it's the smallest, scientists thought Pluto's gravity wouldn't be strong enough to hold heavy ions in its extended atmosphere. But Pluto's gravity clearly is enough to keep material relatively confined.

The researchers were able to separate the heavy ions of methane, the main gas escaping from Pluto's atmosphere, from the light ions of hydrogen that come from the Sun.

Among additional Pluto findings:

• Like Earth, Pluto has a long ion tail, that extends downwind at least a distance of about 100 Pluto radii, loaded with heavy ions from the atmosphere and with 'considerable structure'.
• Pluto's obstruction of the solar wind upwind of the planet is smaller than had been thought. The solar wind isn't blocked until about the distance of a couple planetary radii (distance between Chicago and Los Angeles).
• Pluto has a very thin boundary of Pluto's tail of heavy ions and the sheath of the shocked solar wind that presents an obstacle to its flow.

New image uploaded by NH team

 

[dorsetknob]

Scientist keep coming up with these pluto facts" like it behaves like a planet"
That's Because it is a Planet it has a atmosphere and it has 5 Moons ( again it was a political decision to Quote "Demote it to minor planet)".

 

[Drone]

Planet or not, it doesn't even matter. We're all Sun's satellites. Sun revolves around Milky Way, Milky Way is a part of Local Group, Local Group is a tiny piece of Laniakea. And anyway back in the day there was nothing but quantum fluctuations.


Heh, I've learned a new word: Plutopause

Now more info from American Geophysical Union about Pluto's interactions with the solar wind

And their diagrams:

Using data from an instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft gathered on its Pluto flyby in July 2015, scientists have observed the material coming off of Pluto and seen how it interacts with the solar wind. This figure shows the size scale of Pluto's interaction with the solar wind derived from the data. The bow shock is indicated by the extension of the locations where the study's authors measured the light, solar wind ions to be ~ 20% slowed down from the upstream solar wind speed. The Plutopause (purple) is a finite-sized boundary layer ~ 0.9 Pluto radii thick at the nose and separates the solar wind (blue) from the heavy ion tail (red). Even though the heavy ion tail extends back >100 Pluto radii at the time of the New Horizons flyby, the upstream interaction is very compact and the bow shock is almost compressed onto the obstacle.

Schematic diagram of Pluto's interaction with the solar wind as inferred from SWAP observations along the trajectory of the New Horizons flyby. New Horizons crossed the Sun-Pluto line from the dawn/southern portion of the tail (dashed portion of trajectory) into the dusk/northern (solid portion of the trajectory in the cutaway) at ~ 44 Pluto radii down tail. Portions of the trajectory inside the heavy ion tail behind Pluto are indicated in red and light ion sheath that surrounds the tail are in blue. The bow shock observed near Pluto has dissipated into just a bow wave by the distance back that New Horizons exited through it.

 

[Drone]

New compositional data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal nearly pristine water ice on the surface of Pluto's outermost moon, Hydra.

The Hydra infrared spectrum is similar to that of Charon, which is also dominated by crystalline water ice. But Hydra's water-ice absorption bands are even deeper than Charon's, suggesting that ice grains on Hydra's surface are larger or reflect more light at certain angles than the grains on Charon. Hydra is thought to have formed in an icy debris disk produced when water-rich mantles were stripped from the two bodies that collided to form the Pluto-Charon binary some 4 billion years ago. Hydra's deep water bands and high reflectance imply relatively little contamination by darker material that has accumulated on Charon's surface over time.

 

[Drone]

This is the most detailed view of Pluto's terrain you'll see for a very long time. This is the highest-resolution mosaic by the NASA probe (80 m/pixel). The mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.

 

[R-T-B]

again it was a political decision to Quote "Demote it to minor planet)".

How could it be anything else? Planets and moons don't come with the word "PLANET" and "MOON" etched into their surface for people who look closely enough, it's HUMAN definitions and POLITICS that determine what the terms mean, same as any dictionary term or what have you.

 

[Drone]

New processed videos

 

[Drone]

New Stamps Honoring NASA Planetary Discoveries

8 new colorful Forever stamps – each shown twice – feature Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

and Pluto + New Horizons stamps

And new processed video:

Pluto's 'Twilight Zone'

This movie is based on image of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015.
Seen here, sunlight filters through and illuminates Pluto's complex atmospheric haze layers. The southern portions of the nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as well as mountains of the informally named Norgay Montes, can also be seen across Pluto's crescent.

At the beginning you can see an intriguing bright wisp measuring tens of miles across that may be a discreet, low-lying cloud in Pluto's atmosphere; if so, it would be the only one yet identified in New Horizons imagery. This cloud - if that's what it is - is visible for the same reason the haze layers are so bright: illumination from the sunlight grazing Pluto's surface at a low angle. Atmospheric models suggest that methane clouds can occasionally form in Pluto's atmosphere.
Also you can see how the setting sun illuminates a fog or near-surface haze, which is cut by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains.

 

[Niteblooded]

Liked this photo when it released.

Pluto Haze

This image of haze layers above Pluto's limb was taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. About 20 haze layers are seen; the layers have been found to typically extend horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but are not strictly parallel to the surface. For example, white arrows indicate a haze layer about three miles (five kilometers) above the surface on the left, which has descended to the surface at the right.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

New analysis shows the ocean beneath the surface is still liquid - raising hopes that signs of life could yet be discovered on the dwarf planet.

This image from the New Horizons spacecraft shows the dark, rugged highlands known as Krun Macula (lower right), which border a section of Pluto’s icy plains. Evidence for plate tectonics suggests there is still a liquid ocean beneath the planet's surface

'Thanks to the incredible data returned by New Horizons, we were able to observe tectonic features on Pluto's surface, update our thermal evolution model with new data and infer that Pluto most likely has a subsurface ocean today,' said Noah Hammond, a graduate student at Brown University, and the study's lead author.

The study found if Pluto's ocean had frozen into oblivion millions or billions of years ago, it would have caused the entire planet to shrink.

But there are no signs of Pluto contracting. In fact, New Horizons showed signs Pluto has been expanding.

The dwarf planet also has giant tectonic features, sinuous faults hundreds of miles long as deep as 2.4 miles (4 kilometres). It was those tectonic features that got scientists thinking that a subsurface ocean was a real possibility for Pluto.

"What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion. A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion," lead author Noah Hammond, a Ph.D student from Brown University, said in a statement. The research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

 

[Drone]

New discoveries and images:

 

[Ikaruga]

 

[Drone]

Pluto's Intriguing Moons in a Minute

And here's a new processed video

NASA's planned missions through 2030

 

[Drone]

New Horizons: 1 year later

The powerful instruments on New Horizons not only gave scientists insight on what Pluto looked like, their data also confirmed (or, in many cases, dispelled) their ideas of what Pluto was made of. These compositional maps – assembled using data from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) component of the Ralph instrument – indicate the regions rich in ices of methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2), carbon monoxide (CO) and water ice (H2O).

Illustration of Pluto and its next science target, 2014 MU69, with the trajectory of New Horizons in yellow.

 

[Drone]

new processed video

This movie is created using > 800 images taken by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons (July 8-21, 2015).
This sequence is incomplete, because some of the images were still on board the spacecraft at the time when this video was created.

 

[Drone]

Kuiper Belt diagram by NASA and here's a new processed video:

 

[alucasa]

Gosh dang it. Can we live on ANY of these awesome planets?

 

[Drone]

New processed video by New Horizons team: Close-Up of Charon's Surface

 

[Drone]

The area shown above is south of Pluto’s dark equatorial band informally named Cthulhu Regio, and southwest of the vast nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as the mission team recently redesignated the area to more accurately reflect the low elevation of the plains. North is at the top; in the western portion of the image, a chain of bright mountains extends north into Cthulhu Regio. The mountains reveal themselves as snowcapped—something hauntingly familiar from our Earthbased experience. But New Horizons compositional data indicate the bright snowcap material covering these mountains isn’t water, but atmospheric methane that has condensed as frost onto these surfaces at high elevation. Between some mountains are sharply cut valleys – indicated by the white arrows below. These valleys are each a few miles across and tens of miles long.

New Horizons recently observed the Kuiper Belt object Quaoar, which – at 1100 km in diameter – is roughly half the size of Pluto.

When these images were taken, Quaoar was ~ 6.4 billion km from the Sun and 2.1 billion km from New Horizons. In addition to many background stars, two far away galaxies – IC 1048 and UGC 09485, each ~ 370 billion times farther from New Horizons than Quaoar – are also visible in these images. Unlike the galaxies and stars, Quaoar appears to move across the background scene due to its much closer distance. Other objects which appear to move in these images are camera artifacts.

 

[Drone]

New Horizons 360/3D/VR videos

(by New York Times & California Academy of Sciences)

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

A study of images beamed back by Nasa's New Horizon's space probe may now have uncovered what causes the dark red patch that stains the top of Charon.

Named after the shadowy lands that were home to the evil Sauron in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it appears the area is being created by methane gas trapped on the surface.

Researchers claim the methane may have leaked out from Pluto's atmosphere and been trapped at Charon's pole as the moon passes through the stream of methane.


They say this area of Charon spends long periods in shadow, meaning temperatures drop to extremely low enough to trap the methane as ice.

After a long winter, the pole is then exposed to sunlight which triggers chemical reactions in the methane ice that produce the red colour.

Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Will Grundy, an expert on the outer solar system at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and his colleagues said it could explain similar reddish spots found on Pluto's other moons such as Nix.

 

[Drone]

More links/pics/findings and a video

Pluto ‘Paints’ its Largest Moon Red

Pluto: X-ray Detection Sheds New Light on Pluto

• Using Chandra, scientists have detected X-rays from Pluto for the first time.

• This low-energy X-ray emission comes from interaction between Pluto's atmosphere and Solar Wind

Pluto occultation



On 19 July 2016, Pluto passed in front of the faint star UCAC4 345-180315, offering a rare chance to study the atmosphere of the dwarf planet as the star first gradually disappeared and then reappeared behind Pluto.

The image shows the star and Pluto, 5 minutes before the event (top), then Pluto passing in front of the star (center), then again the star and Pluto, 5 minutes after the event (bottom).

 

[Drone]

 

[Drone]

Scientists Reveal What Made the Huge Heart on Pluto

The half heart glacier lying inside is a really massive glacier, which is not impacted by the seasonal changes. It probably formed when the basin formed, and will remain there in the future. However, it probably flows and retracts over a few hundreds of kilometers (like a heart beating) with time, eroding and shaping the mountains surrounding it.

Source 1

Source 2

 

[Drone]

Pluto's heart sheds light on a possible buried ocean