APOD: Pluto in True Color (2024 Jan 28)

[APOD Robot]

Pluto in True Color

Explanation: What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging. The result featured here, released three years after the raw data was acquired by New Horizons, is the highest resolution true color image of Pluto ever taken. Visible in the image is the light-colored, heart-shaped, Tombaugh Regio, with the unexpectedly smooth Sputnik Planitia, made of frozen nitrogen, filling its western lobe. New Horizons found the dwarf planet to have a surprisingly complex surface composed of many regions having perceptibly different hues. In total, though, Pluto is mostly brown, with much of its muted color originating from small amounts of surface methane energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun.

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[Ann]

Okay...

Colorful Pluto. Admittedly, the APOD caption of August 1, 2021, told us that this picture shows Pluto in enhanced color. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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Faded Pluto in true color. Credit: NASA, JHU APL, SwRI; Processing: Alex Parker

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Pluto is not the only member of the Solar system to have most of its color bled out of it:

Jupiter looking very colorful in a picture] by Voyager 1.

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What Jupiter really looked like during Voyager 1's visit.

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Io, moon of Jupiter, looking very colorful in a picture by Voyager 1.

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What Io really looked like.

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Neptune looking very colorful in a picture by Voyager 2.

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What Neptune really looked like.

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Revisiting NASA pictures of planets and moons in our Solar system is like watching old Polaroid photos fade.

Old Polaroid photo after restoration. But in the case of NASA's pictures of the planets, restoration takes color away.

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And if you want to know how Swedes made their black and white TV sets show pictures in color back in 1962, you may watch this... or not.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Ann

[VictorBorun]

what the Great Red Spot of Jupiter was in fact slightly yellowish light gray?

[Syringa vulgaris]

Still not a planet

[Ann]

what the Great Red Spot of Jupiter was in fact slightly yellowish light gray?

Actually, Victor, I think that the "faded" Jupiter picture that I posted is really too washed-out. The Great Red Spot has never been gray, I'm sure, and hardly just yellow either.

Ann

[Roy]

Pluto has serious stress cracks. Any theories on that subject?

The Ford is a 1949, with 1952 California plates. The ladies could have been been born in the ‘20s which means if either are still alive they are pushing 100.

[Cousin Ricky]

One way to tell which colors are more like what we would see is to actually look at the objects—through a telescope. To my eyes, Jupiter looks pale beige with brown stripes, and Neptune looks pale cyan.

I have not yet observed Pluto (and even when I do, it will probably be to faint to discern color). I have thus far not discerned color in Io, but I’ll say that Ann’s “what Io really looked like” looks a lot closer to the sulfur in my childhood chemistry set than the color-enhanced image does.