{"id":16204,"date":"2015-07-09T17:06:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T09:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/pluto-probe-provides-appetizer-for-next-weeks-flyby\/"},"modified":"2015-07-09T17:06:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T09:06:40","slug":"pluto-probe-provides-appetizer-for-next-weeks-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/pluto-probe-provides-appetizer-for-next-weeks-flyby\/","title":{"rendered":"Pluto probe provides appetizer for next week\u2019s flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New
New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015. Color data from New Horizons\u2019 Ralph instrument was added to colorize the image. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Living up to promises that the view from New Horizons will only get better, the Pluto-bound spacecraft has again bested itself with a dazzling color view of Pluto and Charon released Thursday.<\/p>\n

Scientists believe Charon, the largest of Pluto\u2019s five known moons, formed in an ancient collision between Pluto and another large body. Material from Pluto and the other object eventually coalesced to create Charon, according to the leading theory.<\/p>\n

The image released Thursday was captured in black-and-white late Wednesday by New Horizons\u2019 Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI, telescopic camera. Image analysts added color to the image using data gathered by the spacecraft\u2019s Ralph instrument earlier in the approach to Pluto.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharon is now emerging as its own world,\u201d said John Spencer, a New Horizons scientist from the Southwest Research Institute. \u201cIts personality is beginning to really reveal itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before New Horizons, researchers knew Pluto and Charon were very different.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs early as the early 1990s we knew that Pluto and Charon were very different,\u201d Alan Stern, New Horizons\u2019 principal investigator, told reporters earlier this week. \u201cIn the early 1990s, we used to talk a lot about something called the Pluto-Charon dichotomy \u2014 that they are such different objects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that they had different reflectivities,\u201d Stern said. \u201cCharon is about half as reflective as Pluto. We knew that Pluto had an atmosphere and volatile ices like nitrogen and carbon monoxide on the surface, that can move from place to place. We knew that Charon had none of that, and instead it was covered in water ice like a typical airless satellite of Uranus or Neptune or most of the satellites of Saturn, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"nh-charon_150709_0\"
A view of Charon from New Horizons taken on July 8. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scientists have seen surface details on Pluto, which is reddish in color with higher contrast, come into focus in recent weeks. Charon\u2019s gray surface appeared featureless until now, and researchers now see what they believe to be craters on the 750-mile (1,200-kilometer) diameter moon.<\/p>\n

Charon is the largest moon in the solar system relative to its parent body, and it and Pluto tug at each other in a wobbly orbit with a center of mass between the two icy worlds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we see impact craters on Charon, it will help us see what\u2019s hidden beneath the surface,\u201d said Jeff Moore, the mission\u2019s Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team leader from NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center. \u201cLarge craters can excavate material from several miles down and reveal the composition of the interior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before New Horizons, \u201cWe could infer that Pluto had a much more complicated surface appearance than Charon at large scales,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe knew all of that 20 or 25 years ago, so we went into the system expecting that, and in fact, the Hubble (Space Telescope) images that were obtained over the years proved that all to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now New Horizons, speeding toward a flyby Tuesday just 7,800 miles from Pluto\u2019s surface, is poised to revolutionize how scientists think of it.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015. Color data from New Horizons\u2019 Ralph instrument was added to colorize the image. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI Living up to promises that the view from New Horizons will only get better, the Pluto-bound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2172,1861,2174,2848,2612],"class_list":["post-16204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-charon","tag-jhuapl","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto","tag-swri"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}