{"id":15888,"date":"2015-12-05T00:23:59","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T16:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/see-the-highest-resolution-snapshots-from-julys-pluto-flyby\/"},"modified":"2015-12-05T00:23:59","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T16:23:59","slug":"see-the-highest-resolution-snapshots-from-julys-pluto-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/see-the-highest-resolution-snapshots-from-julys-pluto-flyby\/","title":{"rendered":"See the highest-resolution snapshots from July\u2019s Pluto flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In
In this highest-resolution image from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto\u2019s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. Credits: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SwRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scientists are marveling at some of the best views of Pluto recorded by the New Horizons spacecraft during its July 14 flyby of the unexplored icy dwarf in a set of photos released Friday showing Pluto\u2019s icy, rugged topography in eye-popping detail.<\/p>\n

The imagery from New Horizons\u2019 telescopic camera \u2014 the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager \u2014 was taken when the probe was just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers) from Pluto, about 15 minutes before its closest approach on the first-ever encounter with the king of the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto\u2019s geology,\u201d said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. \u201cNothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we\u2019re there already \u2014 down among the craters, mountains and ice fields \u2014 less than five months after flyby! The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern told Spaceflight Now the images released Friday are some of the highest-resolution images from the Pluto encounter, but there are more still stored inside the probe\u2019s computer for future downlinks.<\/p>\n

The latest images reveal features on Pluto\u2019s surface less than half the size of a city block \u2014 as small as about 250 feet (77 meters) \u2014 as New Horizons\u2019 LORRI camera scanned across a swath hundreds of miles long and 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide, NASA said in a press release.<\/p>\n

Check out the full-resolution version of the Pluto image scan.<\/p>\n

The strip starts at Pluto\u2019s horizon, with mountainous lumps contrasted against the blackness of space, and across a crater field before reaching a ragged stretch of terrain named the al-Idrisi mountains. Geologists believe the mountains are made of water ice, which has the strength of rock at Pluto\u2019s frigid temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cImpact craters are nature\u2019s drill rigs, and the new, highest-resolution pictures of the bigger craters seem to show that Pluto\u2019s icy crust, at least in places, is distinctly layered,\u201d said William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team, from Washington University in St. Louis. \u201cLooking into Pluto\u2019s depths is looking back into geologic time, which will help us piece together Pluto\u2019s geological history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This
This highest-resolution image from NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft reveals new details of Pluto\u2019s rugged, icy cratered plains, including layering in the interior walls of many craters. Credits: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SwRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The high-resolution imagery also reveals finer details of a stark shoreline where the mountains intersect with a vast plain of frozen nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane informally named Sputnik Planum, which appears broken into blocks that could be floating atop a liquid sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution,\u201d said John Spencer, a New Horizons science team member from the Southwest Research Institute. \u201cThe new details revealed here, particularly the crumpled ridges in the rubbly material surrounding several of the mountains, reinforce our earlier impression that the mountains are huge ice blocks that have been jostled and tumbled and somehow transported to their present locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Parker, a member of the New Horizons science team from the Southwest Research Institute, shared his excitement on Twitter.<\/p>\n