“Scientists on the New Horizons team are using this and similar images to map portions of Charon otherwise not visible during flyby”. What is the objective of studying the back side of the largest moon of Pluto?
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The images captured depict the night side of Charon, only distinguishable as it’s dimly lit by the light reflected off of the surface of Pluto and yet still shows just how battered and scarred the surface of the moon is.
Charon is the largest of five known moon of dwarf planet Pluto and was discovered in 1978. It has also taken incredible pictures of the numerous moons of the dwarf planet, and this also included a picture of the dark side of one of the dwarf planet’s biggest moons, Charon.
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon’s diameter is about half that of the distant dwarf planet, but it is still relatively small at 753 miles across. During night on Pluto, temperatures can drop to near absolute zero. Nix has a diameter of 33 miles (54 km) while Hydra has a diameter of 27 miles (43 km).
Already the New Horizons Mission has enriched the knowledge about the planets in the outer realms of the solar system.
The map on the right is much more sensitive to water ice, and takes into account all of the different kinds of ices on Pluto. The photos were taken from about 67,000 miles away, and were then used to create a data cube, or a 3-dimensional array that models Pluto from each LIESA-sensitive wavelength.
At first, New Horizons’ maps of Pluto’s water ice foundation compared LEISA data with a pure water ice template spectrum, though the problem with that was that the water ice’s key spectral features can easily be disguised by methane ice.
“Water ice is Pluto’s crustal “bedrock,” the canvas on which its more volatile ices paint their seasonally changing patterns”.
Interestingly though, the data revealed little or no ice in the area called Sputnik Planum (the left or western region of Pluto’s “heart“) and Lowell Regio (far north on the encounter hemisphere).
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“This indicates that at least in these regions, Pluto’s icy bedrock is well hidden beneath a thick blanket of other ices such as methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide”, NASA said in a statement.
