New Horizons flyby of Pluto [updated for Ultima Thule]

[rootone]

Great result, and still 16 months before we have the full data.
One thing about Pluto (and companions) that I don't yet know an explanation for is,
why is the orbit way adrift of the plane in which all the other planet(oids) are in?
Some 17 degrees out of the usual plane, and not only that, it has a highly non circular orbit so that sometimes is closer to the Sin than Neptune is.

Ideas?

 

[|Glitch|]

Great result, and still 16 months before we have the full data.
One thing about Pluto (and companions) that I don't yet know an explanation for is,
why is the orbit way adrift of the plane in which all the other planet(oids) are in?
Some 17 degrees out of the usual plane, and not only that, it has a highly non circular orbit so that sometimes is closer to the Sin than Neptune is.

Ideas?

I think the most obvious idea is that Pluto's current orbit was the result of some massive collision. Possibly with Triton, Neptune's moon. It could also explain why Triton is the only moon in the solar system with a retrograde orbit. Several papers have suggested a large impact with Pluto in order to create its smaller low-mass moons. Some even suggest that there could be a ring system around Pluto outside the orbit of Pluto's moon Hydra.

Formation and evolution of Pluto's small satellites - arXiv : 1505.01208
Evolution of a ring around the Pluto-Charon binary - arXiv : 1503.06805
The Formation of Pluto's Low Mass Satellites - arXiv : 1303.0280
Are there rings around Pluto? - arXiv : 1109.1614 [PDF]

 

[Dotini]

Frozen plains of Pluto--vast and craterless. Similar surfaces can be seen on glaciers here on Earth.

“We know the atmosphere is nitrogen,” New Horizons co-investigator Fran Bagenal, said of Pluto. Pluto has a tail of charged particles.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...79be4b0c5f0322d155e?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

 

[megacal]

"... that the kinetic energy of a collision would melt the surface and the liquid phase would then flow back into any cavity and then refreeze, so no craters. It would be interesting to simulate the collision process...
Fascinating!

I agree! I was just speculating on that in the Modo forum.

"They say they didn't see any impact craters, but what could explain all those roundish, hexagonal
features?
Maybe a meteorite hit, broke through the crust to the ice below, then re-froze, leaving a
pseudo-crater?
Maybe they are already testing that theory using the super pellet gun
they showed in the NOVA show, Chasing Pluto, vs an ice ball covered with a relatively thin coating of , e.g.
cement? See if it creates those features after impact and re-freezing(?)"​

The "gun" is mounted horizontally, but imagine it would need to shoot veritcally/down at any Pluto-like target in 56k environment.

Sounds like a fun experiment.

 

[DennisN]

Wow, stunning pictures! And I'm sure the best is yet to come!

I second that! Very nice to see Charon above, and the close-up of Pluto... I am truly affected by seeing these nice images!

 

[Astronuc]

I agree! I was just speculating on that in the Modo forum.

"They say they didn't see any impact craters, but what could explain all those roundish, hexagonal
features?
Maybe a meteorite hit, broke through the crust to the ice below, then re-froze, leaving a
pseudo-crater?
Maybe they are already testing that theory using the super pellet gun
they showed in the NOVA show, Chasing Pluto, vs an ice ball covered with a relatively thin coating of , e.g.
cement? See if it creates those features after impact and re-freezing(?)"​

The "gun" is mounted horizontally, but imagine it would need to shoot veritcally/down at any Pluto-like target in 56k environment.

Sounds like a fun experiment.

Well, since I speculated on that, we learned that nitrogen is a rather weak substance in the solid state, so if Pluto is rich in nitrogen (and perhaps some ammonia), then perhaps the nitrogen flows back into the craters.

See my later post - https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/new-horizons-flyby-of-pluto.821560/page-4#post-5170792
Discoveries about Pluto’s surface

 

[rootone]

Nitrogen snowdrifts burying impact craters.
Apparently some sort of tectonic activity too.
Weird but maybe explainable orbit of the Sun.
Composition as known so far does not resemble Neptune, the only really serious planet somewhere nearby.
mmm - this can only get more interesting,

 

[OmCheeto]

I'm not saying it's aliens.

but... Pluto sure looks like brains to me. hmmmm...

Ack!​

 

[DennisN]

New Horizons Close-Up of Charon’s ‘Mountain in a Moat’:
(Source: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-close-up-of-charon-s-mountain-in-a-moat)

 

[Garth]

Charon has more craters than Pluto which is surprisingly short of them. I would surmise that this is because Pluto has been able to retain more of an nitrogen atmosphere that locally freezes in the 'winter' filling in any expressions. The gas then only partially sublimes when 'summer' arrives.

Garth

 

[|Glitch|]

Nitrogen snowdrifts burying impact craters.
Apparently some sort of tectonic activity too.
Weird but maybe explainable orbit of the Sun.
Composition as known so far does not resemble Neptune, the only really serious planet somewhere nearby.
mmm - this can only get more interesting,

While Pluto does not resemble Neptune, it does resemble one of Neptune's moons in regard to its composition - Triton.

 

[Borg]

Today's APOD is a composition of several flyovers.

 

[Garth]

Fantastic! You can see what looks like craters under the nitrogen snow in the 'Sputnik Planum' flyover.

Garth

 

[Monsterboy]

Great result, and still 16 months before we have the full data.
One thing about Pluto (and companions) that I don't yet know an explanation for is,
why is the orbit way adrift of the plane in which all the other planet(oids) are in?
Some 17 degrees out of the usual plane, and not only that, it has a highly non circular orbit so that sometimes is closer to the Sin than Neptune is.

Ideas?

Michio kaku once said Pluto is an over grown comet , comets don't revolve in the same plane as planets right ?

 

[Dotini]

Michio kaku once said Pluto is an over grown comet , comets don't revolve in the same plane as planets right ?

Did he really say that?

Like a comet, Pluto is on an inclined, elliptical orbit, shows activity, has a sort of a coma, tail of charged particles and a magnetic field. Today there is some blurring between asteroids, comets, planetesimals, et al. But in this age of discovery, some confusion is probably to be expected.

 

[Janus]

Charon has more craters than Pluto which is surprisingly short of them. I would surmise that this is because Pluto has been able to retain more of an nitrogen atmosphere that locally freezes in the 'winter' filling in any expressions. The gas then only partially sublimes when 'summer' arrives.

Garth

But wouldn't that fill in any other surface irregularities? It's not like the surface is completely smooth, there are hills and channels; none of which look particularly "smoothed out". And what about the really big craters? would it be enough to fill them in? The pictures showing tall mountains seems to indicate otherwise. They seem to show that any layer of nitrogen snow must be relatively thin.

I think someone else suggested that the impacting object could melt the surrounding ice which would then flow back to fill in the crater. But wouldn't that leave circularly shaped "flat smooth spots", like circular frozen lakes? So far none of the pictures I've seen show this. I think we are stuck with recent geological processes erasing craters. ( or may I suggest "hadeological" processes? Since no one has considered such a possibility before, I doubt that they've coined a name for it yet.)

 

[Garth]

But wouldn't that fill in any other surface irregularities? It's not like the surface is completely smooth, there are hills and channels; none of which look particularly "smoothed out". And what about the really big craters? would it be enough to fill them in? The pictures showing tall mountains seems to indicate otherwise. They seem to show that any layer of nitrogen snow must be relatively thin.

I think someone else suggested that the impacting object could melt the surrounding ice which would then flow back to fill in the crater. But wouldn't that leave circularly shaped "flat smooth spots", like circular frozen lakes? So far none of the pictures I've seen show this. I think we are stuck with recent geological processes erasing craters. ( or may I suggest "hadeological" processes? Since no one has considered such a possibility before, I doubt that they've coined a name for it yet.)

Well the way I see it Sputnik Planum being very light coloured looks like a relatively new (nitrogen) snow field on top of the normal surface, which may well be made of other types of ice and/or rock. Old ice tends to be dirty as it collects interplanetary dust such as on the surface of comets.

Garth

 

[Chronos]

I tend to agree some combination of geolophysical activities are probably necessary to explain the paucity of cratering on pluto. I expected Pluto to look more like the moon or mercury given what we thought we knew of it. There can be little doubt pluto orbits in an impact rich environment so the absence of prolific cratering is very surprising. The same may be true for Charon, which also looks oddly smooth to me.

 

[Monsterboy]

Did he really say that?

Like a comet, Pluto is on an inclined, elliptical orbit, shows activity, has a sort of a coma, tail of charged particles and a magnetic field. Today there is some blurring between asteroids, comets, planetesimals, et al. But in this age of discovery, some confusion is probably to be expected.

Yes he did say that and yea it has a lot of characteristics of a comet , highly elliptical and inclined orbit , takes a long time to complete a revolution , it grows a tail when it is closer to the sun etc etc

 

[Lord Crc]

This bloke over at unmannedspaceflight.com made a composite image, pretty cool:

Source: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7986&st=1005&p=224392&#entry224392

 

[DennisN]

NASA’s New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto’s ‘Heart’ (source: here)

This newest image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old - the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

 

[Dotini]

"...a catastrophic impact between what are now Pluto and Charon could have created a subsurface ocean. That ocean could be the driving force behind icy tectonics, an idea explored by planetary geophysicists http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amy_Barr_Mlinar and http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Geoffrey_Collins in a paper published last year."

Enceladus has a ridiculously hot pole, and we still can’t explain why. Image credit: NASA
http://space.io9.com/could-a-massive-collision-produce-a-subsurface-ocean-on-1719439790

 

[rootone]

NASA released some new images today.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2015/jul/24/pluto-news-nasa-photographs

 

[DaveC426913]

Wait! That's not a heart!

Spoiler: Oh NOOZZ! It's...

PLANET X!

 

[OmCheeto]

NASA released some new images today.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2015/jul/24/pluto-news-nasa-photographs

Umm... In the future, could you please describe such things as:

"OH MY FREAKIN' GOD! NASA RELEASED SOME FREAKIN' AWESOME PICTURES TODAY!"

Thanks!

 

[diogenesNY]

Wait! That's not a heart!

"Oh NOOZZ! It's..."] [deleted spoiler content] !

So, does this mean that we have discovered the source of the _Shaving Cream Atom_?
:)

diogenesNY

 

[B1948J]

But you can! I've given you everything you need to know about the imaging system to do so. (I think I have at least)

Yes Drakkith, I think all that would be useful if one knew the exact time and date of the photo, could calculate the orbits and trajectories of Pluto and Charon and knew the spatial positioning between the two and New Horizons. Since Charon and Pluto orbit each other in binary fashion and New Horizons could be at just about any angle to the two, I'm thinking it's probably not a mental calculation. ;) The common-sense answers provided within this thread provided me with my "duh!" moments - especially the one about crashing into Pluto at 36,000 mph.

 

[DennisN]

Some more eye candy/maps (for some reason I could not post any thumbnail images in most of the cases, so you have to click on the links to see the images):

• http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=254
• http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=252
• Global Map of Pluto's Moon Charon
• Informal Names for Features on Pluto*
• Informal Names for Features on Pluto’s Sputnik Planum*
  
• Informal Names for Features on Pluto’s Moon Charon*

* From the http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Images/index.php: "Names have not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)".

• PIA19697: The 'Other' Red Planet (Animation), source: here.

Edit: I don't remember seeing this one before in the thread:

• 'Capturing' Nix and Hydra (moons of Pluto)

 

[DennisN]

Not Pluto, but beyond...far beyond...
NASA’s New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target (NASA)

NASA has selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system. The destination is a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

 

[nsaspook]

High-res images are starting to come in and be released.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated

 

[DennisN]

A couple of black-and-white, yet awesome (I can't find a better word than "awesome") photos here:

Source: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama (September 17, 2015) from http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Quote: Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon". A bigger picture is here.

A bigger picture is here.

 

[nsaspook]

Wow!

 

[Borg]

The second one is featured in today's APOD. Really looks like a forbidding place.

 

[mfb]

Too bad the probe didn't have the necessary delta-v to enter an orbit...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

A couple of black-and-white, yet awesome (I can't find a better word than "awesome") photos

Really magical! Just mind blowing!