New Horizons made a color photo of Pluto and Charon

New Horizons made a color photo of Pluto and Charon

Before we start enjoying these images of Pluto and his companion Charon, made on the approach, it is worth noting that their colors do not correspond to reality. None of the planets in reality looks like this. However, spectrometers aboard the New Horizons interplanetary station made these images, revealing to us an amazingly diverse mixture of chemicals and minerals on the surface of the planets.

“These images show that Pluto and Charon are very complex worlds. There are many processes going on there, ”said Will Grundy of the New Horizons project at the Lowell Observatory. "Our compositional research department works at the limit of its strength to identify substances in different regions of Pluto and uncover the processes that form them."

The observations were made using data from a tool called “Ralph” from the onboard speed probe a couple of hours before the New Horizons came close to the dwarf planetary system at 7:49 on Tuesday. Thermal imagers are set up in such a way that the chemical composition of Pluto (and its moons) can be marked on the surface, and during this observation, the color brightness was significantly increased, so that scientists could examine the rich chemical composition of the surface.

“Ralph” is paired with another spectrometer, “Alice,” which should measure the cold but dynamic atmosphere of Pluto. The images will help astronomers to decipher what glaciers and chemical mixtures are in the material of the crust and ultimately to understand what chemical processes occur on a small planet. It seems that Charon is also not evenly colored. The reddish tinge on the north polar cap indicates the accumulation of “hydrocarbons and other molecules, a class of chemical compounds called tolins,” a new press release from the laboratory of applied physics says. The rest of the terrain is as rich and diverse as Pluto.

“We are making these color images in order to emphasize the variety of surface types that exist in the Pluto system,” said Dennis Reuter, an employee of the New Horizons chemical laboratory. “They clearly show us how much more to learn from the data we receive.”

And we are just entering the path of discovery. Although the meeting of New Horizons with Pluto lasted only 30 minutes, the loading of a huge amount of data collected by the automatic station will take 16 months. But before the next piece of data is loaded, you need to wait for a signal from the space robot, telling us that it successfully and safely entered the system of Pluto. It is expected that this signal will be received in about an hour.

We continue to watch with bated breath ...

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