Last Look At A Strange Landscape
Yesterday, just three days from its closest encounter with Pluto, New Horizons had its last opportunity to image the hemisphere that will be facing away from it when it passes by. A Plutonian day is long by our standards -- the dwarf planet takes about six Earth days to rotate once about its axis -- so New Horizons will be passing by too quickly to get very high resolution imagery of anything but the side that happens to be facing the spacecraft. A pity, since there are some truly fascinating features on the other side:
New Horizons image of the side that will be facing away from Pluto during its closest encounter. This image has been processed with a technique called deconvolution for clarity. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Alex Parker
A raw image from the LORRI instrument can be seen here. The dark splotches towards the bottom are some unexpected terrain (inasmuch as any terrain can be "expected" in one's first look at a new world) and it's unclear what gives them their appearance. The New Horizons team hopes to determine this with data being collected by the spacecraft's other instruments, as well as an imaging series scheduled after closest approach, when this side of Pluto will be lit by reflected sunlight from its moon Charon.
Combined with a recent color image, processed and posted to Twitter by Roman Tkachenko, Pluto is looking as much a work of modernist art as a Kuiper Belt object: