What's Up In Space? Mystery of Pluto unravels with new pic
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 6:08 PM - NASA images reveal the first hints of surface features on Pluto and a new look at Ceres, and astrophysicists present a mesmerizing 3D map of the universe!
Pluto and Charon, no longer just pixels
Although the image below is quite pixelated - the New Horizons spacecraft is still over 100 million kilometres away from Pluto - the view the spacecraft is returning is no longer '"just" pixels.
Alan Stern's "'Meet Pluto' moment." Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
The light and dark variations seen as Pluto rotates (seen closer inset) make the dwarf planet look rather lumpy, but it's not. Pluto is large enough for its gravity to compact it into a spherical shape.
Those variations are differences in surface features - either based on composition (rock vs ice?) or terrain (highlands vs lowlands?). Similar to how the Moon can look like only part of it is there, because the shadows parts 'blend in' with the darkness of space - as Pluto rotates, the darkness of some of those features is difficult to pick out against the dark space behind it. This gives it the lumpy appearance.
However, it's the fact that we can see these variations that take the two - especially Pluto - from just a collection of pixels to an actual destination.
"After traveling more than nine years through space, it’s stunning to see Pluto, literally a dot of light as seen from Earth, becoming a real place right before our eyes," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, said in a press conference. "These incredible images are the first in which we can begin to see detail on Pluto, and they are already showing us that Pluto has a complex surface."
One of the most interesting and exciting aspects? The persistent brighter area to the lower right could be a polar ice cap!
"As we approach the Pluto system we are starting to see intriguing features such as a bright region near Pluto’s visible pole, starting the great scientific adventure to understand this enigmatic celestial object," says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. "As we get closer, the excitement is building in our quest to unravel the mysteries of Pluto using data from New Horizons."
As the mission team has often repeated, the images from New Horizons will only get better!
Ceres comes into sharp focus
NASA's Dawn mission entered into its first science orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres last Friday, flying at 13,500 kms over its surface, and the science team has released one of the first high-resolution images.
Ceres' southern latitudes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
If you happen to have a pair of red-blue 3D glasses handy, they even created an anaglyph version for our enjoyment.
As with New Horizons, these images will only get better with time, as the spacecraft has already been orbiting Ceres for five days. So, this 'teaser' of the southern hemisphere will soon be followed by crisp, high resolution images of the full Sun-ward face of Ceres and we may even see science data about the night side as well!
Can't wait!
A Mesmerizing 3D Map of the Universe
Gathering together what we know so far, a team of astrophysicists from Canada and France have created the most comprehensive map of the universe.
Presented below, the video reveals the distribution of galaxies within about a billion light years of our galaxy, in all directions. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is represented by the small bright dot at the very centre of the video.
According to the University of Waterloo website:
"The lighter blue and white areas on the map represent greater concentrations of galaxies. The red area [upper left, roughly halfway through the video] is the supercluster called the Shapley Concentration, the largest collection of galaxies in the nearby universe. Unexplored areas appear in medium blue."
The appearance of the map appears to confirm the influence of quantum mechanics on the very early universe.
"The galaxy distribution isn’t uniform and has no pattern. It has peaks and valleys much like a mountain range," Professor Mike Hudson, of the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, said in a press release. "This is what we expect if the large-scale structure originates from quantum fluctuations in the early universe."
Why does this map matter, beyond its rather kaleidoscopic view at the structure of our universe?
Since this map is apparently the first that has taken into account how fast everything is moving (for example, the fact that the Milky Way and Andromeda are rocketing along at around 2 million kms per hour), a closer look at the map might give clues about the distribution of dark matter in the universe.
Sources: NASA New Horizons | NASA Dawn | University of Waterloo
