New Delhi: The US space agency NASA released a series of 10 close-ups of Pluto that depicts an entire day on the dwarf planet. A day of Pluto is equivalent to 6.4 Earth days.
The images were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera on board New Horizons spacecraft when it zoomed past the dwarf planet in an unprecedented flyby in July.
According to NASA, these images and others like them reveal many details about Pluto, including the differences between the encounter hemisphere and the so-called “far side” hemisphere seen only at lower resolution.
On approach to the Pluto system in July 2015, the cameras on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured images of the largest of Pluto’s five moons, Charon, rotating over the course of a full day.
Photo credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Similarly a series of 10 close- photos were also taken of Pluto's largest moon, Charon.
Charon also rotates once every 6.4 Earth days like the dwarft planet. The photos were taken as New Horizons closed in over a range of 6.4 million miles (10.2 million km).
But the pictures of Pluto stand out much more than its largest moon Charon because of the orb's distinct heart-shaped region.
