NASA has presented
us with yet another stunning, backlit view of Pluto, taken by the New
Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July. The photo adds to the growing
repertoire of Pluto images that are slowly being downloaded from the probe and
released by the space agency. This one shows Pluto's crescent in full,
spectacular detail, completing the partial crescent image that NASA
released in mid-September.
In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete
image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the
science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of
Pluto.
This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’
closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at
Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep
haze layers of Pluto's atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing
the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side.
The
shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost
part of the disk. On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of
the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in
this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high,
including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary
Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by
apparent glaciers.
The backlighting highlights more than a dozen high-altitude
layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The horizontal streaks in the sky
beyond Pluto are stars, smeared out by the motion of the camera as it tracked
Pluto. The image was taken with New Horizons' Multi-spectral Visible
Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to
Pluto. The resolution is 700 meters (0.4 miles).
Source:NASA
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