Moreover, in presenting the previously unseen features of Pluto’s surface, the new images from the New Horizons – which is, at present, plunged into the deeper Kuiper belt – displays higher resolution images of the regions that have already been discovered.
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In this extended color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, informally named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s day-night terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. The spacecraft additionally captured the very best ever decision view of the planet with colour & detailed spectral maps and different excessive-res pictures. The landscape is quite perplexing & unique and stretches for hundreds of miles according to William McKinnon of Washington University, St. Louis. One photo in particular has taken the New Horizons team aback because the featured landscape of aligned ridges, which give the surface a snakeskin-like or dragon scales appearance, can be clearly seen. It could even be a mix of ice sublimation & inside tectonic forces which are being derived by the faint daylight Pluto receives.
The images have been taken by the New Horizons probe in its flyby of the dwarf planet in July.
“We used MVIC’s infrared channel to extend our spectral view of Pluto”, said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. The surface colors of the planet were enhanced this way to reveal subtle details in multiple colors.
New Horizons researcher Alex Parker describes, “Once we are able to tear open the haze, we will be able to observe that it appears brighter on the evening sky rather than the morning sky”. The latest images, taken by the spacecraft’s Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) and the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), showed rippling ridges marked by freaky textures, distinct colors and dense pits from surfaces of what was once thought to be a smooth area called Sputnik Planum. Dunes of bright volatile ice particles are a possible explanation, mission scientists say, but the ices of Sputnik may be especially susceptible to sublimation and formation of such corrugated ground.
Pluto has come out like a right little champion with giving us more information to get excited over as scientists at NASA released new images of the planet’s surface! The images have a striking contrast with each other though. Mountains along the west flank of Sputnik lack methane as well.
“It’s like the classic chicken-or-egg problem”, Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said in a statement.
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Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, said that the maps & images that were just received have helped turn a new page as far as the study into the planet is concerned.
