NASA Video Reveals Pluto and Its Moon Charon in Living Color

July 4, 2015

The video comprises views obtained by the New Horizons probe

A new video put together by scientists at NASA and shared with us ordinary folks just yesterday shows dwarf planet Pluto and its moon Charon in living color.

The video, available below, comprises views of the orbs obtained by the space agency's New Horizons probe between June 23 and June 29 from distances ranging from 15 million to 11 million miles (24 million to 18 million kilometers).

The images reveal surface features on Pluto and Charon in unprecedented detail. As explained by NASA scientists, they show the celestial bodies as they would appear to someone traveling through space atop the New Horizons probe.

“What’s especially noteworthy is the level of detail in both bodies,” said researcher William McKinnon of Washington University in Saint Louis in a statement. “It’s a bit unusual to see so much surface detail at this distance,” he added.

Pluto is kind of, sort of like Mars

Mars has for some time now been known as the Red Planet. What's interesting is that, judging by the images the New Horizons spacecraft has so far beamed back to Earth, Pluto is about the same color. Thus, the dwarf planet appears to be reddish brown.

The thing is that, whereas Mars owes its color to the presence of iron oxide, Pluto is believed to be made reddish brown by hydrocarbon molecules formed by interactions between cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light with methane in the orb's atmosphere and on its surface, NASA scientists say.

Mind you, Pluto is not reddish brown all over. Some of its landscapes appear quite red and others look grey. “Pluto's largest dark spot is clearly more red than the majority of the surface, while the brightest area appears closer to neutral gray,” explained researcher Alex Parker.

The new color images delivered by the New Horizon's probe also show several dark spots spanning some 300 miles (480 kilometers) across aligned along the dwarf planet's equator. What these spots might be and how they got there is yet to be determined.

On July 14, the New Horizon's spacecraft is expected to complete a flyby of the Pluto system and come within just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the dwarf planet's surface. During this flyby, it will snap even more detailed images of the orb and its moons.

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