Eerily beautiful – Pluto’s big moon, Charon, is being revealed in all its rugged glory.
NASA released the best color pictures yet of Charon on Thursday. The images were taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Pluto in July and transmitted to Earth 1½ weeks ago.
Massive canyons and fractures are clearly visible on Charon, which is more than half of Pluto’s size. The canyons stretch more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) above the equator, across the entire face of Charon. These canyons are four times as long as the Grand Canyon and, in places, twice as deep.
Even better pictures are anticipated as flight controllers at Johns Hopkins University receive more data from New Horizons, now about 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth.
This image released by NASA on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015, shows Charon, in enhanced color captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. Massive canyons and fractures are clearly visible on Charon, which is more than half of Plutos size. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI via AP)
The Associated Press contributed to this story
I always felt that Pluto was a planet, and it even has a moon. I feel very gratified that Pluto is a real planet, which means that it belongs to those earthly and spiritual attributes that are in the Bible and in the universe of our solar system, -namely 9 attributes of gifts and blessings,etc.