NEW DELHI: NASA has released another image of Pluto using colour data to highlight the composition of the dwarf planet.
Scientists used enhanced colour images to detect differences in the texture of Pluto’s surface by combining close-up images with colour data from the Ralph instrument.
NASA explains, “The “heart of the heart,” Sputnik Planum, is suggestive of a source region of ices. The two bluish-white “lobes” that extend to the southwest and northeast of the “heart” may represent exotic ices being transported away from Sputnik Planum.”
These images were taken when New Horizons was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, and show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).
Pluto sends a breathtaking farewell to New Horizons. Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across. The image, delivered to Earth on July 23, is displayed with north at the top of the frame.
