Pluto's Mysterious Moon - Kerberos - Revealed by New Horizons. Plus Pluto in 3D! Kerberos Revealed. This image of Kerberos was created by combining four individual Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures taken on July 14, approximately seven hours before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, at a range of 245,600 miles (396,100 km) from Kerberos. The image was deconvolved to recover the highest possible spatial resolution and oversampled by a factor of eight to reduce pixilation effects. Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, approximately 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) across in its long dimension and 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) in its shortest dimension. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI New Horizons has beamed back the best image of Pluto's mysterious moon Kerberos, completing the family portrait of all of Pluto's moons. And it reveals some surprises. “Once again, the Pluto system has surprised us,” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
For one, Kerberos is smaller and more reflective than initially thought before the flyby. The reflectivity of the surface of Kerberos is about 50%, this is similar to the other small moons of Pluto, indicating it is coated with mostly clean water ice. Kerberos is also double-lobed shaped - the larger lobe about 8 kilometers (5 miles) across and the smaller lobe about 5 kilometers (3 miles) across - strongly suggesting that it was formed by the merger of two smaller objects.
Family Portrait of Pluto’s Moons: This composite image shows a sliver of Pluto’s large moon, Charon, and all four of Pluto’s small moons, as resolved by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons spacecraft. All the moons are displayed with a common intensity stretch and spatial scale (see scale bar). Charon is by far the largest of Pluto’s moons, with a diameter of 751 miles (1,212 kilometers). Nix and Hydra have comparable sizes, approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) across in their longest dimension above. Kerberos and Styx are much smaller and have comparable sizes, roughly 6-7 miles (10-12 kilometers) across in their longest dimension. All four small moons have highly elongated shapes, a characteristic thought to be typical of small bodies in the Kuiper Belt. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Lastly, get your red-blue glasses and view this gorgeous real stereo image of Pluto taken by New Horizons!
Global stereo mapping of Pluto’s surface is now possible, as images taken from multiple directions are downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Stereo images will eventually provide an accurate topographic map of most of the hemisphere of Pluto seen by New Horizons during the July 14 flyby, which will be key to understanding Pluto’s geological history. This example, which requires red/blue stereo glasses for viewing, shows a region 180 miles (300 kilometers) across, centered near longitude 130 E, latitude 20 N (the red square in the global context image). North is to the upper left. The image shows an ancient, heavily cratered region of Pluto, dotted with low hills and cut by deep fractures indicating extension of Pluto’s crust. Analysis of these stereo images shows that the steep fracture in the upper left of the image is about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) deep, and the craters in the lower right part of the image are up to 1.3 miles (2.1 km) deep. Smallest visible details are about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometers) across. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI For the original Pluto press release, click here .
