Pluto: New Horizons
Explanation:
Pluto's
horizon spans the foreground in this artist's vision,
gazing sunward across that distant and
still unexplored world.
Titled New Horizons, the painting also
depicts Pluto's
companion,
Charon, as a darkened, ghostly apparition with
a luminous
crescent
against a starry background.
Beyond
Charon,
the diminished Sun is immersed in
a flattened cloud of
zodiacal dust.
Here, Pluto's ruddy colors are based on existing
astronomical
observations while imagined but
scientifically tenable details
provided by the artist include high atmospheric cirrus and
dark plumes from surface vents, in analogy to Neptune's large moon
Triton
explored by the
Voyager
2 spacecraft in 1989.
Craters suggest bombardment by
Kuiper
Belt objects, a newly understood
population of
outer solar system bodies likely
related to the
Pluto-Charon system.
NASA is now considering a future robotic reconnaissance
mission
to Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt which could reach the distant
worlds late in the next decade.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
