Blues about Pluto…

Pluto isn’t really a psychedelic riot of colors—this translated color image was created by New Horizons scientists to highlight the many subtle color differences between the planet’s distinct regions.

https://youtu.be/1khLGKIjTzk?list=RD1khLGKIjTzk

Blues from Pluto

Is the colourful image of Pluto real?

According to NASA, New Horizons scientists made the false colour image of Pluto using the principal component analysis technique that highlights the subtle colour differences in the distinct regions of Pluto. The post shared on social media read, “Pluto has a complex, varied surface with jumbled mountains reminiscent of Europa, networks of carved-out valleys, old, heavily cratered terrain sitting right next to new, smooth icy plains, and even what might be wind-blown dunes. New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006 and conducted a six-month-long flyby study of Pluto and its moons in Summer 2015. The spacecraft continues to explore the distant solar system, heading farther into the Kuiper Belt (sic).”

https://www.indiatvnews.com/…/nasa-shares-spectacular…

Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker Published: July 23, 2018

This (below) is the most accurate natural color images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.

These natural-color images result from refined calibration of data gathered by New Horizons’ color Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The processing creates images that would approximate the colors that the human eye would perceive, bringing them closer to “true color” than the images released near the encounter.

This image was taken as New Horizons zipped toward Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015, from a range of 22,025 miles (35,445) kilometers. This single color MVIC scan includes no data from other New Horizons imagers or instruments added. The striking features on Pluto are clearly visible, including the bright expanse of Pluto’s icy, nitrogen-and-methane rich “heart,” Sputnik Planitia.

It is amazing to actually see the surface of a planet which is so far away…

https://youtu.be/aE4lLzP8FU8
Pluto Cartoons HD
Over 5 Hours Of Classic Disney Cartoons

Current Distance 3.1389 billion miles

So how long does it take to get to Pluto?

Roughly 9-12 years.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 1930, it was the first object discovered in the Kuiper belt, when it was declared the ninth planet from the Sun.

Wikipedia
Rotation: 6.4 days
Discovered: February 18, 1930
Apparent magnitude (V): 15.1
Discoverer: Clyde Tombaugh
Discovery site: Lowell Observatory
Shape: Sphere
Coordinates: RA 19h 54m 33s | Dec -23° 3′ 42″

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/dwarf-planets/pluto/in-depth/

“Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 1930, it was the first object discovered in the Kuiper belt, when it was declared the ninth planet from the Sun. Beginning in the 1990s, following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt including the dwarf planet Eris, and the scattered disc, Pluto’s status as a planet was questioned. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU)

formally re-defined the term planet, reclassifying Pluto as a dwarf planet.

Pluto is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is primarily made of ice and rock and is relatively small. Compared to Earth’s Moon, Pluto has only one sixth the mass, and one third the volume.

Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometers; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance (39.5 AU [5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi]). Pluto’s eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding.

Pluto has five known moons. Charon the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally locked.

The New Horizons became the first spacecraft to perform a brief flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, making detailed measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons. In September 2016, astronomers announced that the reddish-brown cap of the north pole of Charon is composed of tholins, organic macromolecules that may be ingredients for the emergence of life, produced from methane, nitrogen, and other gases released from the atmosphere of Pluto and transferred 19,000 km (12,000 mi) to the orbiting moon.”

https://youtu.be/1Mysln7eyz8
The Night Sky – Pluto and the Planetary Blues