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

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

Are these the best shots we'll get of this hemisphere (dark spots), or will the shots taken as it departs the Pluto encounter be better?

I hope not..please tell me we are doing this in hi rez and not the whale part...if so nasa needs to start planning an orbiter lol

[Explorer1]

Sorry, but the press release text is pretty clear on this. They might get a bit with Charon-shine (as well as the winter hemisphere) but otherwise this is the best we can hope for considering the slow rotation.
If there is ever a Haumea flyby, on the other hand...

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

Sorry, but the press release text is pretty clear on this. They might get a bit with Charon-shine (as well as the winter hemisphere) but otherwise this is the best we can hope for considering the slow rotation.
If there is ever a Haumea flyby, on the other hand...

.ukooh

Well im sure this is some crazy terrain like that on the side we are imaging

[machi]

Are these the best shots we'll get of this hemisphere (dark spots), or will the shots taken as it departs the Pluto encounter be better?

Probably yes. There will be observations of dark side of Pluto but it will cover only small fraction of this hemisphere and
those observations will be with much lower SNR so they will be dark and noisy.
Nevertheless I'm pretty sure that it will be very interesting (New Horizons cameras are very sensitive).

[Bjorn Jonsson]

New image of Charon from 11.7.2015 (4:10:35 UTC). It's only one image so I applied few denoising functions to (at least partially) remove compression artifacts. Result is 3× enlarged.

Shows hints of what are probably bright craters. There is also an interesting 'irregularity' at the terminator near the 2 o'clock position that looks like a ridge but the resolution is still too low to tell exactly what's happening.

[Arnold Evans]

Sorry, but the press release text is pretty clear on this. They might get a bit with Charon-shine (as well as the winter hemisphere) but otherwise this is the best we can hope for considering the slow rotation.
If there is ever a Haumea flyby, on the other hand...

I wouldn't be too disappointed in Charon-shine. If you look at the NH images of the dark side of Io, you see a surprising amount of detail.
Granted, Jupiter-shine is a lot better than Charon-shine, but clearly the cameras on NH are set up for this kind of thing.

[Gladstoner]

I'll be happy to see whatever Charon-shine reveals of the southern latitudes, since that terrain will not be exposed to sunlight again in our lifetimes, regardless to any future missions.

[Explorer1]

The latest pic (Charon only) seems to show some sort of feature on the top right off the disc. Is that actual topography, or still just an overactive imagination?

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounte...sure=100%20msec

[nprev]

I think that's the same feature Bjorn was talking about. Looks like it's real to me.

[PDP8E]

July 11, 2015, Pluto
3x, lightly processed

[Gladstoner]

I think the feature on Charon's limb is topographic. It doesn't appear to be due to high-albedo blooming, and it appears to be an extension of a linear feature.

[Julius]

I believe that we will get to see part of the whale at closest approach which will hopefully help us determine the true nature of the darkest terrain.

[Gladstoner]

I believe that we will get to see part of the whale at closest approach which will hopefully help us determine the true nature of the darkest terrain.

We'll get a good look at the 'triple point' between the whale, the heart, and the mottled/northern terrain.

[JRehling]

To an extent that surprises me, Pluto looks like Titan without that "annoying" atmosphere getting in the way of our view.

[fredk]

Now we can see Pluto get larger in just 30 seconds! Here's an animation of the two new frames, 4x oversampled:

Again, no sign of any real changes.

I see no sign of the "cantaloupe" or "mottled" terrain in the bright polar region on the two jpegs. Of course they're jpegs, not raw. But could it be the small-scale mottling is due to processing, eg oversharpening the noise?