New Horizons

[Frida Space]

9 minutes ago, Starwhip said:

  Hide contents

I wonder what causes the holes shown here. They're quite interesting, almost like raindrops, or smallish meteorites. And the stretched-out tracks are weirder. Maybe there are winds in the atmosphere pushing small clumps around? Whatever it is, the result is awesome.

From what I understand, one of the main theories is that they are sublimation pits. Or convective motions in the uppermost layer.

[PB666]

9 minutes ago, Frida Space said:

From what I understand, one of the main theories is that they are sublimation pits. Or convective motions in the uppermost layer.

I thought they might be crators of retun ejected material caused by degassing nearby, some of the surface is soft enough it wouldn't take much to crater it. 

[Aethon]

It looks to me like something is releasing a gas that pushes up the terrain.  When it escapes the cavern collapses.  Notice how the big one in the upper right of your image looks rubbley from the dome collapsing.

[SmartS=true]

<img>http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029917/lor_0299179742_0x636_sci_2.jpg</img>

 

What are all those depressions, and why are there so many of them?

Edited December 7, 2015 by SmartS=true

[Robotengineer]

1 hour ago, SmartS=true said:

<img>http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029917/lor_0299179742_0x636_sci_2.jpg</img>

 

What are all those depressions, and why are there so many of them?

Giant Pluto millipede footprints. 

[Frida Space]

1 hour ago, SmartS=true said:

<img>http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029917/lor_0299179742_0x636_sci_2.jpg</img>

 

What are all those depressions, and why are there so many of them?

Check the three posts before yours.

[lajoswinkler]

Something is travelling down below and occasionally heating up the surface so you get dot-dot pattern in a line.

[Frida Space]

NASA Releases New Visualization of Space Environment at Pluto

www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-releases-new-visualization-of-space-environment-at-pluto

[Aethon]

 

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/zooming-in-on-pluto-s-pattern-of-pits

 

 

Closeup in color.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-close-up-now-in-color

Edited December 10, 2015 by Aethon

[cubinator]

These new images are really exciting. It's amazing how completely different Pluto really is from what we expected, we don't really understand how a world so far out can be so geologically active. Could it be because of tidal interactions with Charon?

[Aethon]

Pluto and Xaron are tidally locked.  They may have other effects on each other however.

[cubinator]

17 minutes ago, Aethon said:

Pluto and Xaron are tidally locked.  They may have other effects on each other however.

I know they are tidally locked, but their proximity and relative masses could have drastic effects on each other's internal activity.

[lajoswinkler]

17 hours ago, cubinator said:

These new images are really exciting. It's amazing how completely different Pluto really is from what we expected, we don't really understand how a world so far out can be so geologically active. Could it be because of tidal interactions with Charon?

Pluto is certainly not completely different from what we expected. It's actually what we expected and we do understand how can it be geologically active.

You shouldn't listen to the media (that includes NASA PR, sadly...) because they exaggerate stuff and use sensationalism.

Pluto was expected to be similar to Triton, and geological activity is possible because the matter needed to be activated has low melting and sublimating points, so even little heat is enough to drive its temperature high enough to cause mobility.

It is a fascinating dwarf planet, but barely unexpected. Details were unexpected, like those weird pits in solid nitrogen surface, but the global picture was very expected.

[-ctn-]

I disagree with that, everyone I've shown pictures to has been totally blindsided. The general public, from my experience, thought Pluto was just a clump of ice floating out there, and to see it as a world with its own unique climate and satellite system is quite a shock to that previous image. 

[Frida Space]

Very interesting talks on Pluto and Charon geology (glacial flows, pitted regions, chaotic regions, snakeskin terrain, segments and islands in Sputnik Planuum, craters, subsurface oceans and so much more) so far at AGU15.

I've uploaded the slides from the talks (120+ slides!) on Imgur in case anyone's interested.

http://imgur.com/a/lQzBa

 

Edited December 17, 2015 by Frida Space

[lajoswinkler]

On 12/11/2015, 5:25:42, -ctn- said:

I disagree with that, everyone I've shown pictures to has been totally blindsided. The general public, from my experience, thought Pluto was just a clump of ice floating out there, and to see it as a world with its own unique climate and satellite system is quite a shock to that previous image. 

You've said "It's amazing how completely different Pluto really is from what we expected, we don't really understand how a world so far out can be so geologically active." where "we" is basically "scientific community".

The general public has no idea of what Pluto might be at all, so this isn't much of surprise for them, either.

[-ctn-]

9 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

You've said "It's amazing how completely different Pluto really is from what we expected, we don't really understand how a world so far out can be so geologically active." where "we" is basically "scientific community".

The general public has no idea of what Pluto might be at all, so this isn't much of surprise for them, either.

Uh, well that wasn't me that said that. But I still stand by my comment. From my experience, non-space-interested folk are really surprised to hear that Pluto is geologically active, looks as gorgeous as it does, or even that it has a tenuous atmosphere.

[lajoswinkler]

My apologies, I've misquoted you.

[Frida Space]

Photo of Nix taken on July 14 at a range of about 14,000 miles (23,000 kilometers), the illuminated surface is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) by 29 miles (47 kilometers).

[lajoswinkler]

New Horizons sent new images so I made another high resolution collage.

Full sized file can be downloaded here.

[lajoswinkler]

One more view of Pluto.

[Kerbart]

On 12/11/2015 at 10:57 AM, lajoswinkler said:

Pluto is certainly not completely different from what we expected. It's actually what we expected and we do understand how can it be geologically active.

You shouldn't listen to the media (that includes NASA PR, sadly...) because they exaggerate stuff and use sensationalism.

You're absolutely right. NASA should stop posting these despicable pictures that just generate a lot of positive buzz and hopefully some extra funding for these kind of missions.

Instead, NASA should just post a statement "high quality imagery of Pluto confirms what we expected to be it; no need to publish them." And since this confirms in detail what we know of the outer planets, we should stop wasting money sending probes there. What's the point, as it only confirms what we already know?

[lajoswinkler]

And here's Charon.

1 minute ago, Kerbart said:

You're absolutely right. NASA should stop posting these despicable pictures that just generate a lot of positive buzz and hopefully some extra funding for these kind of missions.

Instead, NASA should just post a statement "high quality imagery of Pluto confirms what we expected to be it; no need to publish them." And since this confirms in detail what we know of the outer planets, we should stop wasting money sending probes there. What's the point, as it only confirms what we already know?

Lies aren't profitable in the long terms.

[Frida Space]

Thank you for those great images, @lajoswinkler!

Just briefly jumping into the discussion here, I'm somewhere half way between you guys. I've been talking to a couple of scientists in the last months and they all pretty much agreed that New Horizons confirmed a lot of what we already knew (for e.g. that Pluto has criovulcanoes [see Wright and Piccard montes], that the heart of Sputnik Planum corresponds to the biggest concentration of CO, that Sputnik Planum corresponds to the brightest longitude observed from Earth, that there could be an exchange of materials between Pluto and Charon [see Mordor Macula] and a lot of other things) but it also gave us so many more details and even showed us things we didn't expect would be taking place at Pluto (for e.g., many scientists I talked to didn't think Pluto's atmosphere would have allowed for such important volatile-transport mechanisms, many were expecting to find new moons [although it has to be said that most of New Horizons' moon-searching close-up campaign was lost due to the onboard computer failure some 9-10 days prior to C/A], plus no one had predicted such a high atmospheric escape rate [500 t/h] and a planetary geologist from Arecibo specifically told me that "the glacial flows hinted at by New Horizons are a whole new type of geological activity that we had never even thought of for Pluto").

So New Horizons has discovered a wealth of things we weren't expecting and, even when it "simply" confirmed things we already knew, it allowed us (or better, it will allow us) to gain much, much deeper insight into them. I hope no one is saying New Horizons wasn't worth it... if it was for me I'd send a probe to Pluto every two decades or so to see how it changes

Edited December 21, 2015 by Frida Space

[Frida Space]

First color image of the solar system's largest criovulcano (maybe).