‘Family Portrait’ Captured Of Pluto And Moons 

NASA’s New Horizon probe took time out from analyzing the surface features of Pluto to snap a family portrait of sorts (of at least the family we already know about), capturing the first-ever images of the dwarf planet’s smallest and faintest known moons with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument.

According to Discovery News, the spacecraft was able to create an animated sequence of five 10-second observations from a distance of more than 55 million miles (88 million kilometers). Those pictures showed all five of Pluto’s known moons: the largest one, Charon, along with its smaller companions Nix and Hydra and the recently-discovered Styx and Kerberos.

“New Horizons is now on the threshold of discovery,” John Spencer, a member of the mission science team member from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said in a statement Tuesday. “If the spacecraft observes any additional moons as we get closer to Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has seen before.”

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So…Pluto May Have A Polar Ice Cap 

New images captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have revealed a bright feature near the visible pole of the dwarf planet Pluto – a feature that could be a polar cap made of frozen molecular nitrogen ice, officials from the US space agency announced on Wednesday.

The feature, one of several dark and bright spots captured using New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera earlier this month, appears to be brighter than its surroundings, leading scientists to believe it may be caused by a “cap” of highly reflective snow.

The images were captured from a distance of less than 70 million miles (113 million kilometers) during the early and middle parts of the month, and the polar cap hypothesis will be confirmed or disproven when the spacecraft completes a close flyby of Pluto in July, NASA said.

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New Horizons To Study Spider-Like Patterns On Pluto 

When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft makes its flyby of Pluto in July, scientists are hoping to get an up-close look at dark, spider-like surface patterns caused by nitrogen ice and gas eruptions triggered during the dwarf planet’s ice geyser season.

As Discovery News explained on Friday, during Pluto’s ice geyser season, sunlight hits its north pole, causing ice and gas to spray across the surface. The patterns formed as a result of this odd phenomenon have been spotted several times over the years by ground-based observatories, and by the Hubble Space Telescope, but the US space agency is hoping to get a closer look.

Past observations have been unable to resolve details of the dwarf-planet’s surface, but have managed to confirm color and lighting changes that have taken place on a grand scale over the past four years. New Horizons could shed new light on these changes.

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