(Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
Pluto’s veil is lifting. This closest-ever snapshot of the dwarf planet and its moon Charon shows two separate hemispheres in colour – and a line of weird dark spots that look like pepperoni slices. The image is the latest from the New Horizons spacecraft, which is en route to a Pluto fly-by on 14 July, and is a composite of pictures taken by two of the spacecraft’s instruments.
To make it, team members laid down a high resolution black-and-white background from the mission’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, which has been scanning the Pluto system for new rings or moons that the spacecraft would have to dodge at the last minute. It hasn’t found any, the team announced yesterday, so New Horizons can proceed as planned.
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They then added in lower resolution colour data from the Ralph instrument to approximate what our eyes would see if we were tagging along with the spacecraft. The image shows a reddish-brown Pluto contrasted with its darker companion, Charon. Pluto’s pole is pointed towards the camera, meaning the bottom of Pluto in these images is actually only the dwarf planet’s equator.
The left panel features the face of Pluto that will be best observed as New Horizons passes. On the right side, Pluto has rotated to show its other hemisphere, uncovering a series of mysterious spots. Each spot is evenly spaced and about 480 kilometres in diameter, and scientists are still trying to figure out what they are.
“It’s a real puzzle – we don’t know what the spots are, and we can’t wait to find out,” said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
That new mystery, and the question of why Charon is so much darker than Pluto, are proof that the dwarf planet is stubbornly holding onto its secrets – even as New Horizons is fast approaching to pry them away.
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