MEXICO: NASA has published composite images showing Pluto and Charon as they turn around a full day. A day of Pluto is equivalent to 6.4 Earth days.
The photos were snapped between July 7 and 13 by New Horizons from a range of between 400,000 and 5 million miles. The best view of Charon, which highlights the polar dark spot nicknamed Mordor Macula and the canyon informally known as Serenity Chasma, is shown here at the 12 o’clock position.
New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14.
NASA scientists are planning to use photos like these to learn more about the surface of Pluto, but the pictures do have their limitations.
It wasn’t just Pluto that got the full treatment, but also its moon Charon.
“These images and others like them reveal many details about Pluto, including the differences between the encounter hemisphere and the so-called “far side” hemisphere seen only at lower resolution”.
The closest image is that in the 6 o’clock position, which prominently features Pluto’s heart-shaped Tombaugh regio, a vast icy plane that provides evidence of geological activity on Pluto. NASA’s newest Pluto pictures depict an entire day on the dwarf planet.
On approach in July 2015, the cameras on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured Pluto rotating over the course of a full “Pluto day”. As per the space agency, “The side that New Horizons saw in the most detail – what the mission team calls the “encounter hemisphere” – is at the 6 o’clock position”. Kerberos, Nix, Hydra and Styx are all small, oddly shaped bodies that actually appear to tumble in their paths around Pluto.
