New views of Pluto's moon Charon show violent past

[Eugene]

Source: CBS News

By WILLIAM HARWOOD CBS NEWS October 1, 2015, 4:22 PM

New views of Pluto's moon Charon show violent past

High-resolution pictures of Pluto's large moon Charon, captured when NASA's New Horizons probe flew past the dwarf planet on July 14 and transmitted back to Earth late last month, show a huge belt of fractures and canyons four times as long as the Grand Canyon on Earth and up to twice as deep in some places, the agency said Thursday.

"It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open," John Spencer, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team, said in a NASA statement. "With respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars."

The new pictures are the sharpest yet of enigmatic Charon, roughly half the size of Pluto and the largest moon relative to its planet in the solar system. The images reveal a remarkably varied surface that indicates a "complex and violent history."

The canyon system stretches more than 1,000 miles across Charon's surface and likely extends around into the moon's unseen far side.

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Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-views-of-plutos-moon-charon-show-violent-past/

[longship]

1. Understand that New Horizons is going to release this data very slowly.

So we are going to see new stuff from it for years. The data communication from New Horizons is very slow, because of a combination of its distance and low power.

It will be a couple of years before the New Horizon team can even get all the data from the Pluto flyby.

This image of Charon is cool.

R&K

[gvstn]

2. It is so hard to put it into perspective, the distances involved.

But for some reason this Pluto trip intrigues me more than any other NASA mission.

I just find this outlyer fascinating.

[longship]

3. The Pluto system appears to be unique.

And far, far more diverse in its geology than anybody ever dreamed.

Science texts will be rewritten on this mission.

[tclambert]

4. They don't have high-speed internet on Pluto yet.

Notice I said yet.

[greiner3]

6. First they'll get 28.8kb/s

And then 54kb/s but broadband will take decades; it's the American way (and revenue streams also).

[PosterChild]

8. Data compression helps! eom

[longship]

9. Not much help at New Horizon data rates.

Only a little over 1000 baud, which is really, really slow. Even with data compression it is going to take a couple of years to get it all. Plus, any compression has to be lossless. Otherwise they lose data. And remember, it is not all pretty pictures.

Regards.

[PosterChild]

10. Every little bit counts....

.... new horizons has both lossy (jpeg) and loseless (DPCM + Rice). It also can do windowing to remove "dark sky" from around the object of interest .

The first large image of Pluto downlinked used jpeg compression though I'm told it's not being used much any more. The windowing is used for the optical navigation images since it's easy to predict and window a small point light source.

Belive me, every bit counts !

[longship]

11. Granted, but it is still only 1000 baud!!

Which is why it is going to take about two years to get all the data from the flyby.

[Dem_in_Nebr.]

5. It's the Red Star Of Pern!!

All due respect to Anne McGaffrey!

[A Simple Game]

7. Are you saying that those are Thread scars on the surface? n/t

[hunter]

12. It sure looks like something smacked into hard.

wow.