Charon Surface Observations: NH Post-Encounter Phase, 1 Aug 2015- TBD Options

[Gladstoner]

Interesting texture:

[climber]

This one is from Apollo 11, rigth?

[CAP-Team]

Has anyone made an updated map for Charon?

[Steve G]

It almost looks like this island broke apart from the mainland, was carried off and then listed in the Great Melt of the southern hemisphere.
Note how some of the parts fit, similar to South America and Africa.

[TSC]

(Newbie here.) This track is not an image artefact, is it? The lower right corner indicates its location.

[Herobrine]

(Newbie here.) This track is not an image artefact, is it? The lower right corner indicates its location.

I don't think it's an artefact. It's hard to tell at this resolution, but it looks like a catena/crater chain to me. Not sure how common that should be this far out.

[Bill Harris]

Not sure it's a clean fit, and it could also be a fissure where both edges erode back from the newly exposed surface...

Yep, whenever I see that feature my first thought is that it's a wee crustal plate that has broken off and is drifting away. But then I look at it and although the "fit" of the break is good, it just doesn't "feel" right. Probably what I'll do is create an enlarged and enhanced view of that feature and put it out it for public review. I suspect that it is not so much a fracture and a drift as it is a landslide feature.

I note that there is a similar set of fractures to the west making possibly a new "incipient allochthon".

What a strange little world.

--Bill

[scalbers]

Has anyone made an updated map for Charon?

Good question - here is a quick one at 4K resolution...

[JohnVV]

some alternate views of the rift and crater chain
sun set at a 45 deg elevation

the chain

[ngunn]

It almost looks like this island broke apart from the mainland, was carried off and then listed in the Great Melt of the southern hemisphere.
Note how some of the parts fit, similar to South America and Africa.

The detached block is definitely tilted, suggesting it has moved, so I agree with the idea that it was once more horizontal and belonged to the northern 'continent'. As has been pointed out it may not have drifted horizontaly enough to produce the wide gap we now see. It is obviously fractured and different parts of it are tilted at different angles so to me it's not surprising that there isn't a perfect match up with the 'continental' boundary. I think as a general idea your suggestion runs.

[scalbers]

Yes that block looked pretty interesting ever since the farther away images.

Here is a slightly cleaner map compared with what I posted earlier this afternoon.

[nprev]

MOD NOTE: 7 posts about N2 ice & putative polar caps moved to the Pluto System Speculation thread.

[Bill Harris]

Here is a slightly cleaner map...

That is great. And the "Beyond Here Lie Dragons" are looking fuzzier and fuzzier with each improvement of "Terra Cognito". Sadly, soooo tantalizing...

I took this latest map and carefully selected the fuzzy area and applied an unsharp mask to bring out detail. It may have helped, but it's still a lost cause. I 'spect that a dondavis will need to go into the blurred areas and do "an artistic impression" of what they should ought to look like while we're waiting for a New Horizon's Orbiter.

--Bill

[Antdoghalo]

There is this map that could be included from occulations on Solarviews
http://solarviews.com/cap/pluto/charoncyl2.htm
The low resolution areas of the NH map and Mordor appear well on it along with the bright area on the west side of the Pluto facing hemisphere. There is also big area of brightness on the southern hemisphere on it. Maybe there is an opposite colored "Mordor" there.

[JRehling]

I took this latest map and carefully selected the fuzzy area and applied an unsharp mask to bring out detail. It may have helped, but it's still a lost cause.

It's interesting to consider, generically, the spatial distribution of areal units on different worlds: If you see half the world, do you see all of the major areal types and morphological phenomena represented? Usually, the answer is yes. Some exceptions: Ishtar on Venus, the nearside maria on the Moon, Valles Marineris on Mars, the northern plains on Mars, the "ring of fire" around the Pacific on Earth, the northern seas on Titan, the active south polar region on Enceladus… If you only saw the hemisphere "anti-" each of those things, you'd have no inkling of them represented in your data. Often, you'd have a lesser version of them, such as the farside maria on the Moon as a stand-in for the much broader nearside maria, but in some cases, you have no analogue at all.

Still, these cases are the minority, so the odds are, we've seen the important stuff on Pluto and Charon already, with more of the same on the other side. But there's no guarantee of that, and we may have missed something crucial… a Pluto equivalent of Tharsis or a Charon equivalent of Ishtar…