The Dwarf Planet’s Landscape-
【冥王星的表面景象】
New Pluto Photos Reveal a Closer Look at the Dwarf
Planet’s Landscape
More than two
months have passed since the New Horizons spacecraft made its historic flyby of Pluto on the morning of July 14. But the
moment of closest approach, at roughly 7:49 that morning, was just the
harbinger of a trove of new information still to come. The spacecraft continues
to send back data, like the image NASA released on Thursday that was taken by its wide-angle
Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera just 15 minutes after the flyby.
“This image
really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for
yourself,” New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern isquoted as saying of the panorama downlinked from the
spacecraft on Sunday and published Thursday, which shows a 780-mile
stretch of the dwarf planet. “But this image is also a scientific bonanza,
revealing new details about Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and
plains.”
Fifteen minutes
after flying past Pluto, at 11,000 miles above its surface, the New Horizons
spacecraft turned around to face the dwarf planet, the sun lighting it from
behind, to capture the high-resolution image of the landscape.
The smooth, icy
plain on the right side of the image has been informally named Sputnik Planum
(or Sputnik Plain, after the Earth’s first artificial satellite). To the west of the plain, one can see
mountains that rise to heights of up to 11,000 feet above Pluto’s surface,
and to the east “rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.”
The scientists
have released two additional versions of the same image that zoom in on smaller
sections of the landscape to show 230- and 115-mile stretches.
Scientists point out layers in the dwarf planet’s
extended nitrogen atmosphere that extend to at least 60 miles above the
surface, as well as some fog or low-lying haze. “In addition to being visually
stunning, these low-lying hazes hint at the weather changing from day to day on
Pluto, just like it does here on Earth,” Will Grundy, lead of the New
Horizons Composition team, is quoted as
saying.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
condensed from News Week.
09/22/2015
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