New Horizons Pluto System Final Approach, 28 Jun-13 Jul 15 Options

[fred_76]

However, the light coming from the Sun (the area facing the Sun is shown with the yellow dot) is quite correct to explain a potential crater rim illumination on the southern hemisphere of Pluto :

[4throck]

Here's my take on the 6/29 images.
5 image stack with unsharp mask, minimal level manipulation, to preserve the overall albedo variations.
I think that the pole shows up nicely this way, and the rest of the details are quite convincing.
Not that different from the other versions posted here, I guess that's a good thing :-)

[pitcapuozzo]

Probably-stupid quedtion, There are possibilty that the Black Long feature are a metane or azote liquid lake?

Here are the phase diagrams of methane and nitrogen. As you can see, both are stable only as solids in Pluto's conditions (T = 35-55 K [-238 to -218°C], 10-20 microbar [0,00001-0,00002 bars])

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[JRehling]

I don't think *anything* endures as a liquid at pressures as low as Pluto's, at least nothing that's likely to exist in reasonable quantity at Pluto.

Interestingly, hydrogen and neon are liquid at Pluto's temperatures and 1 ATM. Maybe there could be underground liquifers of those, but they'd probably be in tiny abundance unless something has broken down a quantity of H2O. I doubt if we're going to see any signs of present liquid anywhere on Pluto, but some past impact/geological events may have left signs of melting behind. As I noted earlier, Charon may be even more likely to show this.

[Habukaz]

Excerpt from a blog post on the potential for liquids on Pluto:

After Jeff Moore's talk, Jeff Kargel stood up and suggested that liquid nitrogen or neon could potentially flow across Pluto's surface, at least at some times of its year. Then Will Grundy pointed out that nitrogen ice is "a fantastic insulator," so even if liquid nitrogen doesn't flow on the surface, it's quite conceivable that it could be flowing not very far down below the surface. If it's not very far down, it wouldn't take much for some other process to excavate those deposits and make them visible from space. Alan Stern pointed out that impacts on Pluto would happen at 1-2 kilometers per second and would be expected to "locally fluidize" the nitrogen ice. Then Bill McKinnon said that if the impact is big enough, it could briefly increase Pluto's atmospheric pressure and you could have an episode of global nitrogen rain.(!)

[pitcapuozzo]

Alan Stern pointed out that impacts on Pluto would happen at 1-2 kilometers per second and would be expected to "locally fluidize" the nitrogen ice. Then Bill McKinnon said that if the impact is big enough, it could briefly increase Pluto's atmospheric pressure and you could have an episode of global nitrogen rain.(!)

That's how we think Charon could have a transient atmosphere (other than the N2 escaping away from Pluto that it briefly intercepts). Impacts so far away from the sun happen much more slowly than in the inner solar system (1-2 km/s maximum, as Stern stays), and it would be possible for some of them to lift volatiles in the air and make a transient atmosphere around Charon. Stern and Gladstone calculated that Charon is hit by a 1-km KBO approx. every 10^6 yrs, and that such a transient atmosphere would last 10^4 yrs (as an upper limit value).

A few months ago, Gladstone told me: "Apart from the tenuous atmosphere Charon will intercept from Pluto’s escaping N2, the chances of Charon having an atmosphere during the New Horizons flyby are pretty small (but we may be surprised!)"

[neo56]

Here is my take on LORRI pictures taken on 28 and 29 June.





I'm enjoying holidays to catch up my delay on New Horizons photo processing So far I processed pictures from 23 to 29 June.

[Herobrine]

Since all the cool kids are doing it, I took a crack at bringing out features from the 5 LORRI images from 29 June. I opted not to do any deconvolution, to ensure I wasn't inventing features. I'm reasonably confident that any apparent features in these images are real and not artefacts. The result is more-or-less consistent with what has already been posted, but represents one more unique approach that indicates the same features.
Note: Probably best to ignore Charon here, as I aligned the images on Pluto (to 1/8th of a pixel). Charon moves by a noticeable amount between the first and fifth images due to its distance from the barycenter and I've done nothing to correct that movement.

[Phil Stooke]

My stack of June 29th images. Charon's position was adjusted to correct for any movement. No deconvolution is done here.

Phil

[jgoldader]

Downlink ongoing at present, 1kbps. Maybe images later tonight.

[ZLD]

Looked into how much Pluto moved over the course of the course of 6 minutes and decided it wasn't probably enough to fudge too much detail so I had another go.

Much better this time around.




(click to animate)

I wouldn't probably trust the appearance of Charon. It does move a fair bit in 6 minutes and I did not correct for that in any way. Probably why It looks kinda oblong.

[pitcapuozzo]

New Horizons has performed its last TCM (Trajectory Correction Maneuver) before Pluto Flyby.

Stats: third Pluto-approach TCM, sixth TCM since 2006
Date: 3:01 am UTC, June 30th / 11:01 pm EDT, June 29th / 5:01 am CEST, June 30th
Delta-V: 27 cm/s (0.97 km/h)
Delta-T: 23s
Spatial correction: 184 km
Time correction: 20 seconds late
First TCM telemetry: 9:10 am UTC, June 30th / 5:30 am EDT, June 30th / 11:30 am CEST, June 30th

Source

[Gerald]

"OpNav Campaign 4, LORRI 1X1", update of animated gif until 2015-06-29, 27 frames:

Individual frames have been obtained by registering/stacking/cleaning/"dark frame subtraction" of image sets; the resulting frames have then been registered to (faint) background stars as a common reference for the animation.

[pioneer]

Neat. I was wondering if anyone was going to create an approach animation with the latest LORRI optical navigation images.

[nprev]

Here's the official release re today's TCM.

So does this mean that rings and other potentially hazardous debris have been definitively ruled out? According to the 15 Jun update the final analysis was to be completed on 25 Jun, but there doesn't seem to be any announcement of that happening on the site.