New Horizons Transforms Pluto from a Speck to a Sphere [Slide Show]
We get a whole new appreciation for New Horizons’ Pluto close-ups when we compare them with pics taken by even the best Earthbound telescopes
![New Horizons Transforms Pluto from a Speck to a Sphere [Slide Show]](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/DAB40F2C-FE89-40F8-8B32937CBA6C5E6E.jpg?w=590&h=393)
New Horizons Transforms Pluto from a Speck to a Sphere [Slide Show]
- When he was just a new hire at the Lowell Observatory, Clyde Tombaugh was charged with the rather tedious task of examining thousands of photographic plates of the sky. His mission: find the outer solar system planet predicted by Percival Lowell 15 years earlier, which was thought to be responsible for anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune... Lowell Observatory Archives
- On February 21, 1994, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provided the clearest view yet of Pluto and its partner in crime, Charon. Astronomers were excited about the image because it shows the dwarf planet and its moon as two distinct objects... Credit: Dr. R. Albrecht, ESA/ESO Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility; NASA
- Sixty-six years after Pluto's initial discovery, astronomers were finally able to discern some of its surface features with the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble snapped pictures as Pluto rotated over the course of nearly a week, revealing the dwarf planet's bright and dark spots as well as polar ice caps... Credit: Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute), Marc Buie (Lowell Observatory), NASA and ESA
- The pictures above were constructed from multiple Hubble images taken in 2002–03. The dark orange, white and black terrain revealed that Pluto had undergone a dramatic change in color between 2000 and 2002, with its north pole getting brighter and the surface turning redder... Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute)
- In 2005 two new members were added to Pluto's far-flung little family: Nix and Hydra. New Horizons team members discovered the two moons using the Hubble Telescope. Nix and Hydra remained hidden for so long because they are thousands of times fainter than Pluto and don't hug their host planet as closely as Charon does, orbiting two to three times farther out... Credit: NASA/ESA/H.Weaver/A.Stern
- These two pictures were taken a couple weeks apart during the summer of 2011 by scientists using--you guessed it--the Hubble Space Telescope. The green circle marks the spot of Pluto's newest moon, then designated P4 but later rebranded as Kerberos after the hellhound from classical mythology, in accordance with the tradition of giving Pluto's satellites names associated with the god of the underworld... Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
- A year after Kerberos's discovery, Hubble hit on Pluto's fifth and final moon, Styx in 2012. The team of scientists that found Styx were actually scouring Pluto's neighborhood for objects that might prove hazardous to New Horizons during its flyby... Credit: NASA / ESA / M. Showalter / SETI Institute
