Insight A System - Second Planet (Insight A-II)

Solar System 10 Things: Looking Back at Pluto

In July 2015, we saw Pluto up close for the first time and—after three years of intense study—the surprises keep coming. “It’s clear,” says Jeffery Moore, New Horizons’ geology team lead, “Pluto is one of the most amazing and complex objects in our solar system.”

1. An Improving View

These are combined observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. More frames show of Pluto as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto taken by our New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015.

2. The Heart

Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors are enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. The image resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers). Zoom in on the full resolution image on a larger screen to fully appreciate the complexity of Pluto’s surface features.

3. The Smiles

July 14, 2015: New Horizons team members Cristina Dalle Ore, Alissa Earle and Rick Binzel react to seeing the spacecraft’s last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach.

4. Majestic Mountains

Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide.

5. Icy Dunes

Found near the mountains that encircle Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia plain, newly discovered ridges appear to have formed out of particles of methane ice as small as grains of sand, arranged into dunes by wind from the nearby mountains.

6. Glacial Plains

The vast nitrogen ice plains of Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia – the western half of Pluto’s “heart”—continue to give up secrets. Scientists processed images of Sputnik Planitia to bring out intricate, never-before-seen patterns in the surface textures of these glacial plains.

7. Colorful and Violent Charon

High resolution images of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, show a surprisingly complex and violent history. Scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they found a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.

8. Ice Volcanoes

One of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft. This feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers. At about 90 miles (150 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) high, this feature is enormous. If it is in fact an ice volcano, as suspected, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system.

9. Blue Rays

Pluto’s receding crescent as seen by New Horizons at a distance of 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers). Scientists believe the spectacular blue haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small haze particles, which scatter blue sunlight—the same process that can make haze appear bluish on Earth.

10. Encore

On Jan. 1, 2019, New Horizons will fly past a small Kuiper Belt Object named MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule)—a billion miles (1.5 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. It will be the most distant encounter of an object in history—so far—and the second time New Horizons has revealed never-before-seen landscapes.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Colorful Desert World

Picture of the day 2 - November 8, 2019

A rather vibrant desert-type planet with active weather.

Evaporating Planets

Picture of the Day - October 27, 2018

These three planets (not comets) close to a white giant star losing their atmospheres. The giant star has expanded so fast that all of the inner planets are superheated to nearly 2,000 F.

Uranus Banned from Tumblr???

That’s right folks. Under the new Tumblr guidelines all forms of pornography are now banned from this site. That includes the solar system’s butthole. From this point forward I am not going to be able to post any pictures of the 7th planet from the sun, because the planet is not considered child safe.

When this shocking development became known, we asked other members of the solar system what they thought about the new ban.

Obviously the Lunar community was the first to respond, feeling they would be targeted next. The moon had this to say.

Luna: “Uranus banned? They better not ban me next or I am going to moon the shit about them.”

After Luna’s statement, the president of the lunar community (Ganymede) made the following statement. “The Lunar Community does not condone any acts of obscenity. I apologize for Luna’s statement, she was been in rehab lately for her moon rock addiction. She might be a little temperamental about this new ban.”

While most of the solar system community condemned Tumblr for its new ban, interesting enough there was one supporter of the ban.

Pluto of the dwarf planet community recently spoke in support of the ban. When asked why he supported the ban, Pluto has this to say.

Pluto: While everyone is busy dealing with this Tumblr banning Uranus fiasco, I can now spend my time focusing on getting my revenge against the other planets for booting me out of the planet club, and they will be too busy to even notice it. “Evil Laugh”

More news will be posted on this story as it becomes available.

Next up: Tumblr banning bunny butts? Rabbits in revolt!

Picture of the day - January 3, 2019

Desert-like moon orbiting a large gas giant. This is the same world as the skylines from the previous post.

Picture of the day - February 1, 2019 - (Very late post)

Heavily cratered Mars-like planet.

Picture of the day - November 22, 2018

Crescent of a moon against the silhouette of a green gas giant.

Water ice clouds on Mars (desktop/laptop) Click the image to download the correct size for your desktop or laptop in high resolution

Picture of the day - December 29, 2018

Binary Sunset over an ice giant.

Moon Halo

Credit: Mikhail Reva