
NASA has posted a color shot of Pluto

The NASA agency presented the next photos of Pluto. Now a color image of a fragment of the surface of Pluto is laid out, the same image in black and white was shown a little earlier. According to representatives of the agency, photography is the highest quality of all that have been submitted so far. In addition, a color image of another region is laid out, which is located between the al-Idrisi mountains and the Sputnik plateau.
As for this picture (right under the cut), it was obtained with the LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) tool from a distance of about 15.4 thousand kilometers from the surface of the planetoid. The photo was taken 13 minutes before the maximum rapprochement of the station and Pluto. The fragment size of the dwarf planet region in the photograph is 80 * 80 kilometers.

Here is a plot of the surface of Pluto measuring 80 * 80 kilometers. As you can see, the surface is covered with “smallpox”, which probably formed as a result of evaporation of ice on the surface. The size of such pits is tens of meters
Our closest view of Pluto in enhanced color! Also, mapping color onto mountains is a pain. https://t.co/idrsnZAslP pic.twitter.com/wfS0UBcqgi
- Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker) December 10, 2015
A color photo was obtained by combining high-resolution black and white images (detail about 77-85 m per pixel) with lower-quality color images (detail about 630 meters per pixel) obtained with the Ralph / Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera tool. When you click, the image will open in full size. Color images, according to experts, will help to better understand the geology of Pluto. NASA previously posted a black and white version of the images

. “These close-up shots show the diversity of Pluto’s relief, demonstrating the power of our robotic planetary explorers. The New Horizons impressed us with the July span with close-up photographs of Pluto, ”said one of the project team’s representatives, former cosmonaut John Grunsfeld.
New Horizons stores not only digital images of Pluto and other objects, but also observation data for space, planets and planetoids, which were collected by the scientific equipment of the station. Scientists have now received only a fraction of the data stored on board the probe, and just what remains is valuable information, data sets, high-resolution images, data on the atmosphere of Pluto and its satellites.