LONDON: NASA has unveiled mosaics of Pluto and its largest moon Charon that capture the global response to the space agency’s #PlutoTime social media campaign.
Since its June launch, the Pluto Time widget has received more than 339,000 visits and almost 7,000 image submissions from across the globe.
Now, thousands of these submissions have been assembled into three mosaics of Pluto, Charon and a combined image of the two, composed of photos of not only dim skies, but also famous landmarks, selfies and family pets.
“It’s gratifying to see the global response to Pluto Time, which allowed us to imagine what it’s like on Pluto, some three billion miles away,” NASA’s director of planetary science Jim Green said.
“This is a wonderful example of how space exploration and science unite us with a common bond.”
Pluto Time was developed by the New Horizons science team so people could experience the approximate sunlight level on Pluto at noon — which is similar to that of around dawn or dusk on Earth.
The concept stemmed from a question the team had received time and time again: how will you take pictures of Pluto when it is so far from the sun?
“We realised that we could make a web tool that would estimate approximately when the light levels dropped to Pluto levels,” research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute Alex Parker said.
Following the influx of images shared on social media, the Solar System Exploration Public Engagement team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory assembled the mosaics, using about 1,500 to 2,100 images in each.
