First New Horizons fly-by images released
Many cool images! I will only post one, on the right, of the ice mountains seen at the southernmost edge of Tombauh Regio. More can be seen here.
Some quick facts revealed during today’s the press conference:
- They have gotten good data on Pluto’s atmosphere. Earlier data just before fly-by suggested that there are specific regions on the surface that have a lot of methane, but with different properties depending on location.
- They have found that the surface of Charon is active. It also looks like a weird Moon, cratered, with a dark mare region they have dubbed Mordor. Its cause however is not the same as the Moon. There are also a large sequence of troughs and cliffs that are unlike other planets. Some areas are very smooth, as they they have been repaved after cratering. And there is a canyon that is very very deep, 3 miles deep, that makes it relatively deeper than any other canyon in the solar system.
- Pluto’s moon Hydra is not spherical, and in fact looks like an asteroid.
- The white heart is now been named Tombaugh Regio after one of Pluto’s discoverers. In its southern extent there are mountains and strange pits. And this area has no impact craters, meaning this is a very young surface, less than 100 million years old. The mountains have to made of ice, which is essentially the only thing that can be bedrock at Pluto’s temperatures, based on what they think Pluto is composed of.
- The data shows repeatedly that a tiny planet can still have geological activity after billions of years, even without a giant gas giant nearby to produce tidal heating.
- They have named the giant whale-shaped dark region at the equator Cthulu Regio.
The data and images will be coming back from New Horizons for the next year, so the show is certainly not over.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Many cool images! I will only post one, on the right, of the ice mountains seen at the southernmost edge of Tombauh Regio. More can be seen here.
Some quick facts revealed during today’s the press conference:
- They have gotten good data on Pluto’s atmosphere. Earlier data just before fly-by suggested that there are specific regions on the surface that have a lot of methane, but with different properties depending on location.
- They have found that the surface of Charon is active. It also looks like a weird Moon, cratered, with a dark mare region they have dubbed Mordor. Its cause however is not the same as the Moon. There are also a large sequence of troughs and cliffs that are unlike other planets. Some areas are very smooth, as they they have been repaved after cratering. And there is a canyon that is very very deep, 3 miles deep, that makes it relatively deeper than any other canyon in the solar system.
- Pluto’s moon Hydra is not spherical, and in fact looks like an asteroid.
- The white heart is now been named Tombaugh Regio after one of Pluto’s discoverers. In its southern extent there are mountains and strange pits. And this area has no impact craters, meaning this is a very young surface, less than 100 million years old. The mountains have to made of ice, which is essentially the only thing that can be bedrock at Pluto’s temperatures, based on what they think Pluto is composed of.
- The data shows repeatedly that a tiny planet can still have geological activity after billions of years, even without a giant gas giant nearby to produce tidal heating.
- They have named the giant whale-shaped dark region at the equator Cthulu Regio.
The data and images will be coming back from New Horizons for the next year, so the show is certainly not over.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
What a brilliant achievement!