NASA News: Images Show Details of Pluto's Charon
In the latest images sent back to Earth by NASA's New Horizon spacecraft, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is seen with amazing details, revealing the moon's fairly complex and somehow violent past.
NASA said in a statement, "Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they're finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more."
The New Horizons' high-resolution images were taken on July 14 and sent back to Earth on Sept. 21. The photos show a stretch of fractures four times longer than the Grand Canyon and twice as deep in some areas, the lines discovered north of the moon's equator. NASA said the lines and canyons are indications of a titanic geological unrest in the history of Charon.
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One image showed combinations of blue and red on the moon's surface, the colors deemed to have been processed with goals of highlighting the variations that Charon's surface properties boast of.
While Charon's colors are not as diverse as that of Pluto's, one of the photos released showed the striking reddish north polar region, which was given an informal name of Mordor Macula.
John Spencer, Deputy Lead for New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder Colorado, said the pictures suggested that Charon's entire crust has been "split open."
New Horizons was launched in 2006 and passed by Jupiter in 2007 while on its way to Pluto. It is known to be the fastest spacecraft ever as it has achieved a range of 30,000 mph during its historic trip.
In last month's update from NASA, dramatic images were released of New Horizon's epic passing of Pluto, the photos showing seemingly ice-covered mountains, foggy atmosphere, and the small planet's landscape, which was backlit in a dramatic view due to the sun's rays.
Charon boasts half the diameter of Pluto and is the largest satellite close to its planet in the solar system.
