Jump to content

File:PIA20201-Pluto-ManyDifferentTerrains-20150714.jpg

Page contents not supported in other languages.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original file (1,350 × 6,929 pixels, file size: 1.34 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: PIA20201: New Horizons' Very Best View of Pluto (Mosiac)

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20201

This mosaic is composed of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its flyby of the distant planet on July 14, 2015. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel -- revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto's diverse surface. The images include a wide variety of spectacular, cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains -- giving scientists and the public alike a breathtaking, super-high resolution window on Pluto's geology.

The images form a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide trending from Pluto's jagged horizon about 500 miles (800 kilometers) northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, onto the shoreline of Sputnik Planum and then across its icy plains. They were made with the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, over a timespan of about a minute centered on 11:36 UT on July 14 -- just about 15 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto -- from a range of just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers). They were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual "point and shoot," LORRI snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface. This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images.

All told, the images are six times better than the resolution of the global Pluto map New Horizons obtained, and five times better than the best images of Pluto's cousin Triton, Neptune's large moon, obtained by Voyager 2 in 1989.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Date
Source http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA20201.jpg
Author NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Licensing

Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
Warnings:

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

5 December 2015

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current18:19, 6 December 2015Thumbnail for version as of 18:19, 6 December 20151,350 × 6,929 (1.34 MB)DrbogdanUser created page with UploadWizard
No pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed).