© Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
© Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
MOSCOW, July 7 – RIA Novosti. Reanimated probe New Horizons transmitted to Earth a new color and black and white pictures of Pluto, obtained shortly before the short-term loss of communications with the spacecraft in which you can see the “tape” of the mysterious dark spots on the surface of the “king of the underworld,” according to NASA.
These pictures taken while with as close to Pluto, have allowed scientists for the first time fully to consider the structure of the dark regions at the equator of the planet, encircling it in the form of thin strips of dark spots with a diameter of several hundred kilometers away.
New interesting detail was the discovery of bright white regions located just below the equator at the third in a row shot on black-and-white photos of Pluto. As representatives of the team hope New Horizons, a week later they will reveal the mystery of dark and light spots.
© Photo: JHUAPL
Color images of Pluto were obtained in early July by the merger of high-resolution photos with the black and white camera LORRI and data about the color of Pluto’s surface, extracted from low-quality photos the camera Ralph. In addition to color, “the king of the underworld” in the near future, scientists will begin to search for clouds in the rarefied atmosphere of Pluto using the same camera.
New Horizons probe was launched on 19 January 2006. Its main purpose – Pluto and its moon, Charon, Nix and Hydra. It is expected that the unit will come to a minimum distance of Pluto in July 2015. After that, he can continue to study objects in the Kuiper Belt – the outer asteroid belt, where there are many large icy bodies, many of which are believed by astronomers larger than Pluto.
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