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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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The first color movies from NASA's New Horizons mission show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, and the complex orbital dance of the two bodies, known as a double planet. This near-true color movie were assembled from images made in three colors - blue, red and near-infrared - by the Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera on the instrument known as Ralph. The images were taken on nine different occasions from May 29-June 3, 2015.

The movie is "Pluto-centric," meaning that Charon is shown as it moves in relation to Pluto, which is digitally centered in the movie. (The North Pole of Pluto is at the top.) Pluto makes one turn around its axis every 6 days, 9 hours and 17.6 minutes-the same amount of time that Charon rotates in its orbit. Looking closely at the images in this movie, one can detect a regular shift in Pluto's brightness-due to the brighter and darker terrains on its differing faces.

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Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

The first color movies from NASA's New Horizons mission show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, and the complex orbital dance of the two bodies, known as a double planet. This near-true color movie were assembled from images made in three colors - blue, red and near-infrared - by the Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera on the instrument known as Ralph. The images were taken on nine different occasions from May 29-June 3, 2015.

The movie is barycentric, meaning that both Pluto and Charon are shown in motion around the binary's barycenter - the shared center of gravity between the two bodies as they do a planetary jig. Because Pluto is much more massive than Charon, the barycenter (marked by a small "x" in the movie) is much closer to Pluto than to Charon. Looking closely at the images in this movie, one can detect a regular shift in Pluto's brightness-due to the brighter and darker terrains on its differing faces.

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Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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Pluto and Charon, the largest of Pluto's five known moons, seen Jan. 25 and 27, 2015, through the telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. New Horizons was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto when the frames to make the first image were taken; about 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) closer for the second set. These images are the first acquired during the spacecraft's 2015 approach to the Pluto system, which culminates with a close flyby of Pluto and its moons on July 14.

Pluto and Charon subtended 2 pixels and 1 pixel, respectively, in LORRI's field of view. The image was magnified four times to make Pluto and Charon more visible, though during the next several months, the apparent sizes of Pluto and Charon, as well as the separation between them, will continue to expand in the LORRI images.

The image exposure time was only a tenth of a second, which is too short to detect Pluto's smaller moons. LORRI will also be taking images with longer exposure times (10 seconds) that should reveal both Nix and Hydra.

Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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Release Date: October 9, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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Release Date: October 9, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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In this movie, put together from false-color images taken by the New Horizons Ralph instrument as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter in early 2007, show ammonia clouds (appearing as bright blue areas) as they form and disperse over five successive Jupiter “days.” Scientists noted how the larger cloud travels along with a small, local deep hole.

Release Date: October 9, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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This five-frame sequence of New Horizons images captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter earlier this year, this first-ever “movie” of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface. Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point – the plume's source is 130 kilometers (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon.

The appearance and motion of the plume is remarkably similar to an ornamental fountain on Earth, replicated on a gigantic scale. The knots and filaments that allow us to track the plume's motion are still mysterious, but this movie is likely to help scientists understand their origin, as well as provide unique information on the plume dynamics.

Io's hyperactive nature is emphasized by the fact that two other volcanic plumes are also visible off the edge of Io's disk: Masubi at the 7 o'clock position, and a very faint plume, possibly from the volcano Zal, at the 10 o'clock position. Jupiter illuminates the night side of Io, and the most prominent feature visible on the disk is the dark horseshoe shape of the volcano Loki, likely an enormous lava lake. Boosaule Mons, which at 18 kilometers (11 miles) is the highest mountain on Io and one of the highest mountains in the solar system, pokes above the edge of the disk on the right side.

The five images were obtained over an 8-minute span, with two minutes between frames, from 23:50 to 23:58 Universal Time on March 1, 2007. Io was 3.8 million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from New Horizons; the image is centered at Io coordinates 0 degrees north, 342 degrees west.

The pictures were part of a sequence designed to look at Jupiter's rings, but planners included Io in the sequence because the moon was passing behind Jupiter's rings at the time.

Release date: May 14, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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The New Horizons spacecraft took the best images of Jupiter's charcoal-black rings as it approached and then looked back at Jupiter in February 2007. This sequence of pictures from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shows the well-defined lanes of gravel- to boulder-sized material composing the bulk of the rings; labels point out how these narrow rings are confined in their orbits by small “shepherding” moons (Metis and Adrastea).

Release Date: May 1, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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Using its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), the New Horizons spacecraft captured the two frames in this “movie” of the 330-kilometer (200-mile) high Tvashtar volcanic eruption plume on Jupiter's moon Io on February 28, 2007, from a range of 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles). The two images were taken 50 minutes apart, at 03:50 and 04:40 Universal Time, and because particles in the plume take an estimated 30 minutes to fall back to the surface after being ejected by the central volcano, each image likely shows an entirely different set of particles. The details of the plume structure look quite different in each frame, though the overall brightness and size of the plume remain constant.

Surface details on the nightside of Io, faintly illuminated by Jupiter, show the 5-degree change in Io's central longitude, from 22 to 27 degrees west, between the two frames.

Release Date: May 1, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons has acquired six global maps of Jupiter as the spacecraft approaches the giant planet for a close encounter at the end of February. The high-resolution camera acquired each of six observation "sets" as a series of individual pictures taken one hour apart, covering a full 10-hour rotation of Jupiter. The LORRI team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) reduced the sets to form six individual maps in a simple rectangular projection. These six maps were then combined to make the movie.

The table below shows the dates and the ranges from Jupiter at which these six sets of observations were acquired. Even for the latest set of images taken January 21-22, from 60.5 million kilometers (37.6 million miles), New Horizons was still farther from Jupiter than the average distance of Mercury from the Sun. At that distance from Jupiter, a single LORRI picture resolution element amounts to 300 kilometers (186 miles) on Jupiter.

Many features seen in Jupiter's atmosphere are giant storm clouds. The Little Red Spot, which LORRI will image close-up on February 27, is the target-like feature located near 30 degrees South and 230 degrees West; this storm is larger than the Earth. The even larger Great Red Spot is seen near 20 degrees South and 320 degrees West. The counterclockwise rotation of the clouds within the Great Red Spot can be seen. The westward drift of the Great Red Spot is easily seen in the movie, as is the slower drift, in the opposite direction, of the Little Red Spot. The storms of Jupiter are not fixed in location relative to each other or relative to any solid surface below, because Jupiter is a fluid planet without a solid surface.

Also, dramatic changes are seen in the series of bright plume-like clouds encircling the planet between 0 and 10 degrees North. Scientists believe these result from an enormous atmospheric wave with rising air, rich in ammonia that condenses to form the plume tails, and with falling air in the dark areas just to the east of each plume.

The maps of Jupiter shown here do not include the polar regions, because those regions are not well seen by LORRI from its vantage point high above Jupiter's equatorial region. Shadows of Jupiter's moons (first of Io, then of Ganymede) appear in two of the maps.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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This "movie" strings 11 images of Jupiter captured by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on January 9, 2007, when the spacecraft was about 80 million kilometers (49.6 million miles) from the giant planet. The sequence covers a full 10-hour rotation of Jupiter, during which the moons Ganymede and Io - as well as the shadows they cast on Jupiter - move across the camera's field of view.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

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Release Date: January 18, 2007

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This "movie" shows a series of LORRI images of Pluto and Charon taken at 13 different times spanning 6.5 days, from April 12 to April 18, 2015. During that time, the spacecraft's distance from Pluto decreased from about 69 million miles (111 million kilometers) to 64 million miles (104 million kilometers).

Pluto and Charon rotate around a center-of-mass (also called the "barycenter") once every 6.4 Earth days, and these LORRI images capture one complete rotation of the system. The direction of the rotation axis is shown in the figure. In this movie, the center of Pluto is kept fixed in the frame.

The 3x-magnified view of Pluto highlights the changing brightness across the disk of Pluto as it rotates. Because Pluto is tipped on its side (like Uranus), when observing Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft, one primarily sees one pole of Pluto, which appears to be brighter than the rest of the disk in all the images. Scientists suggest this brightening in Pluto's polar region might be caused by a "cap" of highly reflective snow on the surface. The "snow" in this case is likely to be frozen molecular nitrogen ice. New Horizons observations in July will determine definitively whether or not this hypothesis is correct.

In addition to the polar cap, these images reveal changing brightness patterns from place to place as Pluto rotates, presumably caused by large-scale dark and bright patches at different longitudes on Pluto's surface. In all of these images, a mathematical technique called "deconvolution" is used to improve the resolution of the raw LORRI images, restoring nearly the full resolution allowed by the camera's optics and detector.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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This "movie" shows a series of LORRI images of Pluto and Charon taken at 13 different times spanning 6.5 days, from April 12 to April 18, 2015. During that time, the spacecraft's distance from Pluto decreased from about 69 million miles (111 million kilometers) to 64 million miles (104 million kilometers).

Pluto and Charon rotate around a center-of-mass (also called the "barycenter") once every 6.4 Earth days, and these LORRI images capture one complete rotation of the system. The direction of the rotation axis is shown in the figure. In one of these movies, the center of Pluto is fixed on the center of mass (accounting for the "wobble" in the system as Charon orbits Pluto).

The 3x-magnified view of Pluto highlights the changing brightness across the disk of Pluto as it rotates. Because Pluto is tipped on its side (like Uranus), when observing Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft, one primarily sees one pole of Pluto, which appears to be brighter than the rest of the disk in all the images. Scientists suggest this brightening in Pluto's polar region might be caused by a "cap" of highly reflective snow on the surface. The "snow" in this case is likely to be frozen molecular nitrogen ice. New Horizons observations in July will determine definitively whether or not this hypothesis is correct.

In addition to the polar cap, these images reveal changing brightness patterns from place to place as Pluto rotates, presumably caused by large-scale dark and bright patches at different longitudes on Pluto's surface. In all of these images, a mathematical technique called "deconvolution" is used to improve the resolution of the raw LORRI images, restoring nearly the full resolution allowed by the camera's optics and detector.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons acquired images of the Pluto field three days apart in late September 2006, in order to see Pluto's motion against a dense background of stars. LORRI took three frames at 1-second exposures on both Sept. 21 and Sept. 24. Because it moved along its predicted path, Pluto was detected in all six images.

These images are displayed using false-color to represent different intensities: the lowest intensity level is black, different shades of red mark intermediate intensities, and the highest intensity is white.

The images appear pixilated because they were obtained in a mode that compensates for the drift in spacecraft pointing over long exposure times. LORRI also made these observations before operators uploaded new flight-control software in October; the upgraded software package includes an optical navigation capability that will make LORRI approximately three times more sensitive still than for these Pluto observations.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Mark Showalter

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Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Stuart Robbins

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Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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The moons Nix and Hydra are visible in a series of long-exposure images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from Jan. 27-Feb. 8, 2015, at distances ranging from about 125 million to 115 million miles (201 million to 186 million kilometers). Assembled into a seven-frame movie, the images provide the spacecraft’s first extended look at Hydra (identified by a yellow diamond) and its first-ever view of Nix (orange diamond). The right-hand image set has been specially processed to make the small moons easier to see.

Each frame is a combination of five 10-second images, taken with New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) using a special mode that combines pixels to increase sensitivity at the expense of resolution. At left, Nix and Hydra are just visible against the glare of Pluto and its large moon Charon, and the dense field of background stars. The bright and dark streak extending to the right of Pluto is an artifact of the camera electronics, resulting from the overexposure of Pluto and Charon. As can be seen in the movie, the spacecraft and camera were rotated in some of the images to change the direction of this streak, in order to prevent it from obscuring the two moons.

The right-hand images have been processed to remove most of Pluto and Charon’s glare, and most of the background stars. The processing leaves blotchy and streaky artifacts in the images, as well as a few other residual bright spots that are not real features, but makes Nix and Hydra much easier to see. Celestial north is inclined 28 degrees clockwise from the "up" direction in these images.

Release date: February 18, 2015

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

This "movie" of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it raced toward Pluto in July 2014. Covering almost one full rotation of Charon around Pluto, the 12 images that make up the movie were taken July 19-24 with the spacecraft's best telescopic camera – the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) – at distances ranging from about 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million kilometers).

Charon is orbiting approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto's surface. Why the slight "wobble" of each body in the images? Pluto and Charon constitute a true binary planet — a more extreme example of the Earth-moon system. Because Charon is about 1/12th as massive as Pluto – the largest moon in the solar system relative to the planet it orbits - both Pluto and Charon orbit a gravity point (called a barycenter) between the pair. The movie's frames are centered on that point, showing the "barycentric wobble" of the system as Charon orbits.

The National Academy of Sciences cited the binary nature of Pluto-Charon when ranking this mission highly for a new start in the early 2000s. Now, New Horizons is seeing the binary system beginning to emerge in its own cameras.

In these distant images, Pluto is four LORRI pixels across, Charon just two pixels. In July 2015, during New Horizons' closest-approach to Pluto, a single LORRI pixel will show details the size of a football field, about 100 yards across.

Release date: August 7, 2014

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

This "movie" of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it raced toward Pluto in July 2014. Covering almost one full rotation of Charon around Pluto, the 12 images that make up the movie were taken July 19-24 with the spacecraft's best telescopic camera – the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) – at distances ranging from about 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million kilometers).

Charon is orbiting approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto's surface. Why the slight "wobble" of each body in the images? Pluto and Charon constitute a true binary planet — a more extreme example of the Earth-moon system. Because Charon is about 1/12th as massive as Pluto – the largest moon in the solar system relative to the planet it orbits - both Pluto and Charon orbit a gravity point (called a barycenter) between the pair. The movie's frames are centered on that point, showing the "barycentric wobble" of the system as Charon orbits.

The National Academy of Sciences cited the binary nature of Pluto-Charon when ranking this mission highly for a new start in the early 2000s. Now, New Horizons is seeing the binary system beginning to emerge in its own cameras.

In these distant images, Pluto is four LORRI pixels across, Charon just two pixels. In July 2015, during New Horizons' closest-approach to Pluto, a single LORRI pixel will show details the size of a football field, about 100 yards across.

Release date: August 7, 2014

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute