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Color Movie Made of Pluto-Charon System

Posted by samzenpus on from the colour-out-of-space dept.

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.

4 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Not what I wanted by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    I was hoping for a movie of the Pluto / Goofy system.

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  2. 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.

    ~~

  3. Re:Movie? by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's ridiculous is that it's made of LORRI images from nearly a month ago. There's much high resolution available now. Here's what Pluto has looked like in the past few days.

    Heck, even years ago we knew that Pluto-Charon looked like this

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    What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
  4. Re:Movie? by _anomaly_ · · Score: 2

    There are two movies, the first centered on Pluto, the second is a barycentric view.

    --
    "I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein