Latest Pluto Pictures!

Last week NASA revealed the latest awesome images of Pluto from the New Horizons mission. Check out this amazing image of the Cthulhu Regio and Sputnik Planum below. I can see that the image has been horribly compressed when I uploaded it to the blog so it's well worth clicking on this link to the hi res original.

The dark mountainous region is Cthulhu Regio whilst Sputnik Planum is the vast, flat, icy, white expanse. The plain is another example of the puzzling lack of craters on Pluto's surface, which implies a younger age for the surface than anyone had predicted. Contrastingly, Cthulhu is the most heavily cratered, and therefore oldest, region yet seen.

According to Principal Investigator Alan Stern the most surprising thing revealed so far by the mission has been the sheer breadth of geographical features found on Pluto; it's just as varied and interesting as Mars.

The new image is a mosaic made from images downloaded since September 5th when the probe began its year long download of the data it accumulated during the flyby. We're going to need to be patient to get it all but, on the upside, it means there's lots of goodies still to come.

A-Hazing New Pluto Picture

Exciting news Plutophiles! Last Friday NASA had another Pluto press conference and in it they released the latest images from New Horizons, the most amazing of which was this beauty below.

This is an image taken by the probe after it has sped past Pluto. It is looking back at the night side of the world 7hrs after closest approach. The halo around the edge is the hazy atmosphere backlit by the sun. It was only recently that we even became sure that Pluto had an atmosphere; the data here shows that it does indeed have one, that it extends about 80 miles above the surface and that it is comprised mainly of nitrogen. But the haze is actually the interesting bit. The haze is made up of complex hydrocarbons, like ethylene and acetylene, which are created when ultraviolet light from the sun interacts with methane gas in the atmosphere. The UV light in turn changes the hydrocarbons into tholins, these fall back to the surface and are what gives the dwarf planet its now distinctive dark patches.

Pluto has once again, however, thrown up a mystery. These hazes are created by the hydrocarbons condensing into little ice crystals, but it was thought that Pluto would be too warm for this to happen at a height of above 20 miles or so; yet we're seeing haze as high as 80 miles and we have absolutely no idea how. Some new ideas are needed to come up with a satisfactory explanation for this, but that's a good thing; if the answer to your question doesn't throw up at least a couple of new questions then you're not doing it right and that, Science Fans, is one of the exciting things about the frontiers of science.

Pluto: Why So Smooth?

Fantastic news, Science Fans! It took it's sweet time (about 4.5 hours at the speed of light) but we finally got the first data from the New Horizons spacecraft. And even better than that: there is already a genuine mystery to puzzle out. So far we have two great pictures and some data on methane density.

The first picture, below, is of Pluto itself; it is a close up of the now famous 'heart' region. For scale, some of these peaks are about 11,000 feet high, which is comparable with mountains here on earth. What is interesting is that there are hardly any craters at all in this picture. It's very unlikely that this is because Pluto hasn't been hit by any meteors so we have to conclude that it means this surface is a very new one, and when we say very new here we mean about 100 million years old. Therefore, in the recent geological past, a process must have occurred to create this new surface. Generally this could be achieved by the planet being geologically active, like the earth is, with earthquakes and volcanoes and such churning up the place and destroying any evidence of crater impacts; or, a very large mass nearby can literally cause tides in the rock that cause them to grind and move and create heat again destroying any impact craters that might be around. The problem is that Pluto is both too small and cold to be geologically active and there is nothing large enough nearby to create tidal forces. We have a mystery.

The next picture, below, is of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, and here we see the same puzzling phenomenon. It's surprisingly smooth, there aren't all that many obvious craters; conjure (or Google) an image of our pock marked moon for comparison and the lack of craters will be much more obvious. The same argument applies here as to Pluto and we simply don't yet have an explanation. I guess it's not completely impossible that just by chance the two bodies have avoided impacts for several billions of years, but given that we know the Kuiper belt, of which Pluto is a part, is chock full of rocks and potential meteors this really does seem extremely unlikely. Do not, however, be disheartened. If there's one thing that scientists like it's a mystery. If you ask a question and the answer doesn't throw up at least a dozen new questions then you're doing it wrong.

These images are just the first tranche of what will ultimately be a deluge of data, frustratingly most of that is still on the New Horizon's craft and it will take weeks or even months for it all to be beamed back home. These initial images will have to keep us busy for a little while but one thing is for certain; we have lots of new and exciting discoveries to make about our former planetary cousin.

Pluto Revealed

I, for one, am excited. 3,462 days ago a rocket was launched carrying the New Horizons spacecraft. Its mission was to conduct the first ever flyby of the planet Pluto. Yes, that's right, the planet pluto. Back then it was still a planet but as every 8 year old but few 38 year olds know Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 and we now have a solar system with 8 planets in it. The problem was that we started to find a lot of other objects out there that were about the same size as Pluto so, if we were going to keep pluto, then we would have to make room for these other objects too and very soon we might have a solar system with a couple of dozen planets in it. Good luck getting the 8 years olds to memorise all those.

Anyhoo, Pluto being so very small (only a couple of thousand kilometres across) and receiving only about one thousandth of the sunlight we enjoy it is quite difficult to see. Even when we point the mighty Hubble space telescope at it we fail to get images with any great detail in them. The image on the right was the best we had until new Horizons started edging closer in the last few weeks.

Then last weekend, at a distance of about 1 million miles from Pluto, the image below was beamed back from 3 billion miles away. The increase in resolution is marked and will have the Geology, Geophysics and Imaging nerds at John Hopkins university very excited; as it will all of us interested in going boldly where no one has ever gone before. And the best part? It's only going to get better. The craft will pass within 8,000 miles of the planet's surface today and, asides, from all the cool science that will be done, should take some pretty awesome pictures before speeding off into the outer solar system at 50,000 miles per hour.

Images courtesy of NASA