These Maps of Pluto and Its Charon Moon Are the Most Detailed Ever Made

Using data from the New Horizons space probe, researchers have created the first ever comprehensive maps of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

The new maps help to complete New Horizons official mission: a better understanding of the dwarf planet at the far reaches of the solar system. To create them, scientists at NASA used data from New Horizons instruments like the Long Range Recognition Imager (LORRI), a telescope with an 8.2-inch aperture. LORRI is essentially a camera with a large telephoto lens built withstand the brutal cold of the outer solar system.

At the time of New Horizons' launch, scientists predicted that LORRI would offer "an unprecedented look at the geology on Pluto and its moons." After taking pictures during the flyby 2015, it's exactly exactly that.

Lunar and Planetary Institute / Paul Schenk / NASA / New Horizons

"This is one of the most complex yet most exciting planetary mapping projects. Every time new pictures came down, something new would be revealed, "said Paul Schenk, a lead New Horizons researcher at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), in a press release.

While LORRI and its accompanying instruments , such as the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), feels like a data source, it fell to the researchers in a new way.

These cartographic and topographic maps provide a comprehensive view of the surface of the world. Examples include the Sputnik Planitia, a 625-mile frozen nitrogen ice sheet that's on average 1.5 miles thick, making it the best known area on Pluto's surface.

the highest, the maps offer a new look at the Tenzing Montes, the tallest mountain range on Pluto. Formed at the southwestern margins of the Sputnik Planitia, these icy peaks have steep slopes of 40 degrees, which would be able to make them expert-level Black Diamond ski trails if they were on Earth.

NASA

Named after Nepalese sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who alongside Edmund Hillary became one of the first known people of the world. Everest, the range is higher than 3.7 miles above Pluto's mean elevation-the dwarf planet's equivalent of "sea level." It is comparable to Denali in Alaska. The mountain range also includes various types of ice on Pluto. Pluto's low gravity, the planit sputnik, for example, would be too weak to maintain a mountain range.

The maps also provided a better understanding of Charon. The tiny moon features depressions 8.7 miles deep, the Marianas Trench, and the maps reaffirm that the Charon Mountains of the world have become known to them

USRA / NASA

The maps also revealed new mysteries about the distant celestial bodies. The longest continuous feature on Pluto is apparently an eroded ridge-and-trough system stretching 1,864 miles from north-to-south alongside the western side of the Sputnik Planitia.

The maps have been archived in the Planetary Data System and will be available to the public. A research paper describing the maps has been published in the journal Icarus .

New Horizons is not done yet. The probe recently woke up a month-long hibernation to get ready for its next mission: A 2019 New Year's Day with an asteroid further than Pluto called Ultima Thule. Following that flyby, we could get a whole new set of maps from the farthest object ever visited by spacecraft.

Source: USRA