New video of Pluto and Charon from NASA


    Pluto, as presented by the artist,

    NASA has uploaded a new video of Pluto and Charon on YouTube. The video was composed of individual photographs taken by the Long Horizon Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) tool at New Horizons station. The station itself is gradually approaching Pluto, and will soon come to a minimum distance. Now the station is located from Pluto at a distance of about 25 million kilometers.

    The images themselves showed more details of the surface of both Pluto and its satellite, Charon. Now you can see that there is a dark area on Charon, the origin and nature of which is not yet very clear to scientists. Experts hope to clarify the situation in July, since on July 14 the probe will approach Pluto at a distance of only 12.5 thousand kilometers.



    By the way, a little earlier, NASA laid out the animated rotation sequence of Charon and Pluto in color . These images are understandable only to specialists - it is not possible to consider anything significant for a layman here.



    Experts say that this animation sequence is very important for science, since the color difference between Pluto and its satellite is clearly visible. For example, Charon's color is closer to gray, while Pluto seems light brown.

    Starting in April, the deconvolution method (image processing method in a graphical editor) allowed scientists to identify a wide range of objects on the surface of Pluto, including a bright area at one of the poles, which is already baptized with a “polar cap”. According to experts studying Pluto, the surface of the planet is very different in structure, with a large number of areas differing from each other (at least the brightness in the picture). Previously, some scientists believed that Pluto is a relatively homogeneous body, but it is now clear that this is not so.

    If someone is interested in other images of Pluto, then the gallery of raw photos of Pluto is here .

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