New Horizons flew by Pluto this Morning – What We Just Learned About Pluto. The More information about the Pluto has been unveiled by New Horizons. It takes some time for them to send back some more information about the Pluto.
New Horizons flew by Pluto this Morning – What We Just Learned About Pluto
Is New Horizons sending data back to Earth very fast? The New Horizons succeeded to send the more information about Pluto. It will takes 16 months for them to send to complete information. Why New Horizons taking this much time to send the more information about the Pluto back to the earth? The science team has a term called ‘rate stepping’ to describe teh speed at which we receive data. Currently New Horizons receiving the data at the lowest rate of 1000 bits per second. When the space craft transitioned to ‘spin mode’ the download rate will be up to 4000 bits per second. This reason makes us to estimate 16 months time to download all the data.
Is the surface of Charon is more cratered than that of Pluto?
We’ve known for some time now that the surface of Pluto and its largest moon Charon are different. The images we’ve received so far show a much younger surface on Pluto and an older, more battered surface on Charon. We’re not quite sure yet. It’s possible that more active internal geologic processes on Pluto are causing the surface to erode and recycle itself more rapidly or it’s possible that atmospheric processes are covering up some of Pluto’s craters. When we get more data back, we’ll be able to piece this mystery togetehr. “It’s ambiguous today,” Stern says, “Because we just got the [preliminary] data and don’t have supporting data to unveil the whole story.”
What’s the maximum image resolution we hope to get on the dark side of Pluto?
That’s a tough question, NASA says.
For those who aren’t aware, now that the New Horizons spacecraft is beyond Pluto, it’s looking back at the planet and seeing the night side. This would be a bit of a disappointment, except that the science team cleverly arranged the flyby to occur on a day where Charon is on the opposite side. Sunlight is bouncing off Charon, illuminating those otherwise obscure nightside terrains.
While Charon’s reflected light allows us to see terrains that would be invisible, we’re looking into the glare of the sun, which mean’s we’re picking up a lot of noise. To boost the signal to noise ratio, we need to combine pixels on our images. Essentially, we’re making a dark, grainy image of Pluto’s nightside somewhat less grainy, but losing resolution in the process.
How many days will it take to see the latest color data of Pluto?
We have color data on ground right now, and the science team is working on processing it. We may see some more color images later in the day. The image shown at the top is a composite of Pluto (left) and Charon (right) presented at the recent media briefing and published by New Scientist. Note that the colors in this image have been exaggerated to highlight different surface features on each of the worlds. Charon also called as Pluto I, which is the largest among the five known moons of the dwarf planet Pluto. Pluto Charon system lies outside of the Pluto.