Being an enormous nerd, I’ve been following the New Horizons mission to Pluto since it was launched in 2006. I was in high school. (I used to be a teenager! Can you believe it?) I can’t imagine what it’s been like for the New Horizons team, waiting for nine years, most of that with New Horizons in hibernation, waiting and hoping. But, in spite of July 4th’s technical glitch, good old New Horizons is starting to send back some really cool images of Pluto, its big moon Charon, and its tiny moons Nix, Hydra, Kerebos, and Styx.
I took the liberty of downloading the latest published image from New Horizons’ LORRI camera (as of this writing on July 9th, 2015) . I cut the image up and processed the images of Pluto and Charon separately. I stretched their contrast (so that the brightest pixel in each image is pure white and the darkest pixel is pure black; thanks GIMP!) then applied a small-radius unsharp mask to bring out the details. I then joined the images side-by-side. I haven’t rescaled them, so they’re pixelized. Their relative brightnesses aren’t accurate (Charon’s a lot darker than Pluto), but their relative sizes are. Here you go:
Of course, in the days leading up to New Horizons’ July 14th, 2015 flyby of Pluto, my piddly little enhancements are going to be blown out of the water by real, up-close, high-resolution pictures. And you know what? I don’t mind a bit!
Sublime Curiosity 
Reblogged this on Blogger at the Edge of the Universe. and commented:
Woo!! Surface features on Pluto and Charon! I’m eagerly awaiting the best images to come! 😀
Reblogged this on intjerest and commented:
Cool! Unfortunately I heard relatively little about this until recently, so this has come as a big surprise to me. I guess that’s a good thing, though, in an odd way; I rarely get happy surprises because I try to minimize surprises. Should I savor this one?
Anyway, fellow nerds, enjoy.
Thank you! My kids will love this, and we will look for more from your blog! 😁
Thank you. Fair warning, though, I occasionally use swear-words.
So noted, thank you! I will pre-screen. 😉
Great post
On the topic of New Horizons I wrote a post recently on the artefacts carried aboard the spacecraft in case it is ever uncovered by alien civilization in the long distant future, after it has left the solar system.
http://thesciencegeek.org/2015/06/21/new-horizons/
I’m gonna put that post on my reading list. But I know one of the artifacts is a Florida quarter, which they used to balance New Horizons and make it spin-stable. Which is pretty cool.
Thank you Hobosullivan
The Science Geek
http://www.thesciencegeek.org