Slashdot Mirror


Color Movie Made of Pluto-Charon System

VernonNemitz writes: Today NASA released a color movie of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, as the New Horizons probe approaches its July 2015 rendezvous date. "It's exciting to see Pluto and Charon in motion and in color," said New Horizons principal examiner Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) at Boulder, Colorado. "Even at this low resolution, we can see that Pluto and Charon have different colours - Pluto is beige-orange, while Charon is grey. Exactly why they are so different is the subject of debate," Stern said.

2 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Movie? by pahles · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's about 10 frames with 20 coloured pixels dancing around each other...

    --
    Sig?
    1. Re:Movie? by CaptQuark · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is just the first images from over 50 million miles away. It is intended to show the orbital dynamics as the two bodies revolve around a shared center of gravity.

      The more detailed views of the planetoid and its moon will come as the probe gets closer to the pair during the next 23 days.

      ~~