New Horizons: Near Encounter Phase Options

[Fran Ontanaya]

Charon looks like a whole polar cap sublimated away. If it was a crater I imagine such deformation wouldn't have left the interior so flat.

[EDG]

Yes. My first thoughts... Titania, Ariel and concerning Charons enourmous canyon at the right limb about Miranda with its chevron type areas.

I was thinking more of Oberon at first (before I saw the chasms), but yeah - definitely a Uranian satellite vibe (I think John Spencer mentioned that too in the briefing too).

[Habukaz]

OK... a bit unscientific, BUT.....There is a dark spot just visible in the shaded region - a tiny impact crater with ejecta? A vent? just a dark spot --- or maybe something else.

Could also be a compression artefact, I suppose.

[FOV]

That dark streak going diagonally to the lower right shadowed corner from the mountains; is that real or an artifact? Reminds me of the dark seams in some of the Mars panoramas, but this isn't stitched.
Edit: it's more visible in Fredk's mosaic, going vertically down the inset.

It looks like a naturally occurring groove or furrow of some sort to me.

[ZLD]

A weak attempt at getting the false colorization onto the latest closeup.




Disclosure: this is nothing remotely close to accurate - lots of fudgework here.

I did notice something quite interesting near the top left though. Looks like dunes.

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Edit
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Prefer a rotated version actually.

(click to enlarge)

[Aldebaran]

Just woke up. (damn I missed the press conference.) Total information overload. Some incredible images/

So I've heard three possible sources of heat driving the geology (or a combination of them):

1. Radioisotopes
2. Liquid water still releasing heat from the original formation
3. Impact Event with Charon

4. Insolation

- and I'd be guessing, but volume changes associated with phase transitions in water ice. Possibly Ice XI to Ice IX (at depth of course)

[kap]

A weak attempt at getting the false colorization onto the latest closeup.




Disclosure: this is nothing remotely close to accurate - lots of fudgework here.

I did notice something quite interesting near the top left though. Looks like dunes.

Even if this isn't remotely close to accurate it really helps bring out a bunch of features. I spent the first glances at the B&W image marveling over the mountains and the strange terrain at the bottom right towards the limb, however your colorization really brings out the "flat" areas.

-kap

[Habukaz]

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing too. Maybe some of the brighter parts on the left side inside the dark area are wall collapse features?

I'd guess impact craters or something else centred within the apparent depression. There are two apparent focal points there, if we are looking at the same stuff. But yeah, there's more bright stuff going on outside of that area, apparently.

[Mongo]

Just a reminder that the afternoon downlink from NH would have completed by now. From Emily's blog post on encounter activities:

Wednesday, July 15 at 19:25 UT / 15:25 ET / 12:25 PT: 6.9hr downlink: First Look B

LORRI Nix at 3.0 km/pix (~9x19 pixels across disk). Taken 2015-07-13 23:19:16. Range 590,000 km. - The best photo of Nix that will be available during encounter period; LORRI's best will be 10 times higher-resolution

3 frames on Pluto from high-resolution LORRI mosaic at 0.4 km/pix (Pluto will fill all 3 frames, each frame ~410 km wide). Taken 2015-07-14 10:10:15. Range 77,000 km. - The highest-resolution images of Pluto that will be available during encounter period

Alice, LEISA, REX, and SWAP data

This is assuming that the priority images have not changed -- this morning's Pluto image was supposed to have been another single-frame image like the one received on Tuesday, for a stereo view of Pluto.

[kyokugaisha]

Think Doug mentioned it in his twitter but the area near the terminator reminded me of some Cassini images of the venting region on Enceladus.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Michael Capobian...]

It looks like the new Pluto image includes very little or none of the dark terrain (Cthulhu).

[stevelu]

Yikes!

Here's an extremely crude attempt to locate the hires frame on the full disc frame:
[attachment=36944:P_LORRI_...location.jpg]

It looks like the dark smudge that xflare and I are interested in really leaps out in the more sunlit, full-Pluto image from yesterday, even as the sun angle washes out the shadowed ripples.

(If you're not seeing the correspondence, note how the smudge seems to align with what I'm thinking of as the 'rockpile' in fredk's orientation. Though looking at my post's preview I don't see it quoting fredk's image properly, so you may have to follow the link to his original post.)

On one level, that's obvious. It's not a shadow, so it doesn't depend on sun angle. But it may be a clue about what to look for elsewhere, if you're inclined to hunt for more potential vents—er, odd smudges.

[xflare]

Think Doug mentioned it in his twitter but the area near the terminator reminded me of some Cassini images of the venting region on Enceladus.

Yes, it has similarly striated ridges

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Nafnlaus]

Think Doug mentioned it in his twitter but the area near the terminator reminded me of some Cassini images of the venting region on Enceladus.

Wow, don't get my hopes up, but you're right, it's hard to not see the similarities.

There are small and large ripples visible in the tombaugh regio region of the highest resolution image. JPEG compression artifacts or dunes/hills?

They're a large field of JPEG Dunes. They're located right next to some hills that seem to be inscribed with the complete text of the Wikipedia article on pareidolia.

[Habukaz]

"The whale" is now informally "Cthulu Regio"

We were presented this map yesterday: