Image from Pluto... [astronomy]

[Externet]

In my ignorance,  did not know until today, Pluto had already been photographed several years ago.  In case someone else has not seen it before, am attaching an image of its surface found on the web :

- Widht is 50 miles -  Shoreline of Sputnik planum. By the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, 14 July 2015.

Enjoy.

 

[swansont]

Do you have a link for where the photo came from?

[studiot]

I posted this reference in another thread, to recent information about the New Horizons results.

On 6/19/2022 at 2:13 PM, studiot said:

Thank you for your response.

The program was on BBC last Wednesday evening.
It described the New Horizons spacecraft project from its launch in 2006 to it fly past od Pluto in 2015 and the subsequent analysis.
There were many significant suprises.
One of which was the bright red colour of much of the planet's surface.
It had been thought that Pluto was a dead planet, too cold for anything else and largely made of ice.
Yet it showed definite volcanic activity, ice being a rock at those temperatures and the magma being made of flowing water. There has been very significant revisions to planetary geology theory as a result.
It was also thought to be far outside the zone where life might commence.
However the quantum fact that radiation energy is proportional to frequency means that although sunlight is seriously weakened there is still some radiation of sufficient energy to spilt one of the main chemical compounds there ie methane.
The program likened the effect to a Los Angeles smog where large carbon framed molecules are formed in the atmousphere and fall back to the surface as red dust particles, accounting for the red colour. Earthside laboratory experiments have confirmed this process.
So Pluto has water, and the natural ability to generate complex organic molecules.

The weakness of the sunlight prompted my comment about Pluto being perhaps way behind Earth in the life generation race, unlike our normal assumption of alien life being way ahead of us.
 

[Externet]

Link containing the image ---> https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-mountainous-shoreline-of-sputnik-planum

Others ---> https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=sputnik planum

And a few more ---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_Planitia