Pluto and Charon in Color: Barycentric View (Animation)
Caption:
The first color movies from NASA's New Horizons mission show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, and the complex orbital dance of the two bodies, known as a double planet. This near-true color movie was assembled from images made in three colors -- blue, red and near-infrared -- by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera on the instrument known as Ralph. The images were taken on nine different occasions from May 29-June 3, 2015.
The movie is barycentric, meaning that both Pluto and Charon are shown in motion around the binary's barycenter -- the shared center of gravity between the two bodies as they do a planetary jig. Because Pluto is much more massive than Charon, the barycenter (marked by a small "x" in the movie) is much closer to Pluto than to Charon. Looking closely at the images in this movie, one can detect a regular shift in Pluto's brightness-due to the brighter and darker terrains on its differing faces.
Cataloging Keywords:
| Name |
Value |
Additional Values |
| Target |
Pluto |
Charon |
| System |
Pluto |
Kuiper Belt |
| Target Type |
Satellite |
Dwarf Planet, KBO |
| Mission |
New Horizons |
|
| Instrument Host |
New Horizons |
|
| Host Type |
Flyby Spacecraft |
|
| Instrument |
Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) |
|
| Detector |
|
|
| Extra Keywords |
Color, Infrared, Movie |
| Acquisition Date |
|
| Release Date |
2015-06-11 |
| Date in Caption |
2015-06-03 |
|
| Image Credit |
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
| Source |
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19688 |
| Identifier |
PIA19688 |
Movie Download Options
