Huge Canyon Spied on Pluto Moon Charon (Photos)

[Buster's Uncle]

Huge Canyon Spied on Pluto Moon Charon (Photos)
SPACE.com
By Mike Wall  9 hours ago



This photo of Charon, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 11, 2015, highlights the big Pluto moon’s intriguing dark polar cap and shows probable craters and canyons as well.



NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted multiple craters and canyons on Pluto's big moon Charon, including one chasm that appears to be longer and deeper than Arizona's Grand Canyon, mission team members said.


The newly resolved features are visible in an image captured by New Horizons on Saturday (July 11). The photo also provides a good look at the 200-mile-wide (320 kilometers) dark patch at Charon's north pole, whose origin and nature remain mysterious.

"This is the first clear evidence of faulting and surface disruption on Charon," William McKinnon, deputy lead scientist with New Horizons' geology and geophysics investigation team, said in a statement.

"New Horizons has transformed our view of this distant moon from a nearly featureless ball of ice to a world displaying all kinds of geologic activity," added McKinnon, who's based at Washington University in St. Louis.

The most noticeable crater in the new photo, which was received at mission control today (July 12), is about 60 miles (100 km) wide and lies near Charon's south pole. The brightness of the rays emanating from the crater suggests that it formed relatively recently, researchers said.

The crater's floor is significantly darker than surrounding areas, perhaps because the impact that gouged out the crater exposed different material than that found on the surface. It's also possible that material at the bottom of the crater simply has a larger grain size and therefore reflects less sunlight, mission team members said.

Charon is by far the largest of Pluto's five known moons. At about 750 miles (1,200 km) in diameter, Charon is about half as wide as the dwarf planet itself.

New Horizons also captured Pluto in unprecedented detail Saturday. A photo taken that day by the spacecraft shows linear features that could be cliffs as well as a probable impact crater, mission team members said.

New Horizons is speeding toward the first-ever flyby of Pluto. On Tuesday morning, the spacecraft will zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 km) of the dwarf planet, gathering a variety of data about Pluto, Charon and the system's other four satellites with its seven science instruments. Closest approach will occur at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT).


http://news.yahoo.com/huge-canyon-spied-pluto-moon-charon-photos-025731334.html

[Geo]

Picture taken on July 11? Guess that means Charon will be more or less on the 'other' side of Pluto when New Horizon whizzes past the dwarf planet.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  I know they're tidally locked, but no idea what the period is.

[Geo]

Roughly 6.4 days.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's close.  Charon must be huge in Pluto's sky.

[Geo]

With barely 20,000 clicks between them? I would think so.

[Buster's Uncle]

Can you imagine how it would have affected history if the moon was close like that?  -Assume for the purposes of this speculation that it's much lower density or something, so Earth not tidally locked and the tides are about the same - the point being how it would have changed things for humans if the moon was that much harder to miss up there/that much easier to get to...

[Geo]

I don't think a rigid body the size of the Moon would be able to survive such a close orbit. Even with a significantly lower density.
But for an analogue, think of the view from Europa or Ganymede towards Jupiter...

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, think of that, then.  How does human history change with the Moon really huge in the sky?

[Geo]

You'd be howling in the night for one thing.
And there'd be a score more Moon gods then Sun gods.