It's just space, baby: New Horizons sent hi-res photos of Charon

Pluto is an interesting object to study, and Earth scientists have received a tremendous amount of information about this dwarf planet thanks to the work of the New Horizons station, which is now moving away from Pluto. During the passage past this planetoid, the probe was able to photograph the satellites of Pluto. Now these photos are gradually coming to Earth. The other day, NASA uploaded Charon's high-resolution photos in color to the Network (processing). Let me remind you that Charon is the largest satellite of Pluto, and now we have the opportunity to see the bewitching surface of this object. Thanks to new photographs, astronomers have the opportunity to clarify the history of the origin of the Pluto system.

Charon’s size is about half that of the planetoid itself. Pluto and Charon are always facing each other on one side, a similar situation with the Earth with the Moon. But the similarity ends here, since Charon is not a dead celestial body with impact craters and a bunch of dust. No, there are huge canyons, mountains and a surface covered with various chemical compounds of various colors. By the way, the north pole of Charon is red. Here, most likely, there are many hydrocarbon compounds that somehow get to Charon from Pluto.

The most interesting object on the surface of Pluto’s satellite is the “scars” located by the belt. This is the main system of canyons, extending for 1,600 kilometers on the surface of the Charon, probably it is on the back of the planetoid. According to NASA, the size of this formation is four times the size of the Grand Canyon. This is a type of geological structure that could be formed only as a result of the manifestation of geologically active processes. In general, geologists of the Earth expected to see canyons in Charon last of all.



However, this is far from the only surprise that the New Horizons Earth astronomers made. Few scientists expected to see mountains, exotic streams of ice, atmosphere and methane dunes on Pluto and Charon. Astronomers are likely to be surprised more than once, as New Horizons transmitted only 10% of the accumulated information, and another 90% will be transmitted for a long time.