Astronomy Picture of the Day - 2017 July 31 - VIDEO: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons

apod (46)in #science • 7 years ago

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is
featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2017 July 31

Pluto Flyover from New Horizons
Credit: NASA, JHUAPL, SwRI, P. Schenk & J. Blackwell (LPI);
Music Open Sea Morning by Puddle of Infinity

Explanation:

What if you could fly over Pluto -- what might you see?

The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it shot past the distant world at a speed of about 80,000 kilometers per hour.

Recently, many images from this spectacular passage have been color enhanced and digitally combined into the featured two-minute time-lapse video. As your journey begins, light dawns on mountains thought to be composed of water ice but colored by frozen nitrogen.

Soon, to your right, you see a flat sea of mostly solid nitrogen that has segmented into strange polygons that are thought to have bubbled up from a comparatively warm
interior.

Craters and ice mountains are common sights below. The video dims and ends over terrain dubbed bladed because it shows 500-meter high ridges separated by kilometer-sized gaps.

Although the robotic New Horizons spacecraft has too much momentum ever to return to
Pluto, it has now been targeted at Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU 69, which it should shoot past on New Year's Day 2019.

Tomorrow's picture: sand shower