NASA New Horizons Captures Pluto and Charon in Color Video

First Posted: Jun 22, 2015 08:28 AM EDT

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back the first ever color movies of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The new video reveals the complex dance of the two bodies, known as a double planet.

"It's exciting to see Pluto and Charon in motion and in color," said Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator, in a news release. "Even at this low resolution, we can see that Pluto and Charon have different colors-Pluto is being beige-orange, while Charon is grey. Exactly why they are so different is the subject of debate."

New Horizons will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14. It will actually zoom just 7,800 miles above the surface of the dwarf planet. This is the first ever mission for a spacecraft to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a relic of solar system formation beyond Neptune. These findings will hopefully answer questions about the surface properties, atmospheres and moons of the Pluto system.

The researchers created these new movies with the use of images made in three colors-blue, red and near-infrared. The images were taken on nine different occasions from May 29 to June 3.

Although the two moves were prepared from the same images, they reveal the Pluto-Charon pair from different perspectives. One movie shows Charon as it moves in relation to Charon. You can detect a regular shift in Pluto's brightness in this movie due to the brighter and darker terrains on its differing faces. In contrast, the second movie shows both Pluto and Charon in motion around the binary's shared center of gravity between the two bodies.

"Color observations are going to get much, much better, eventually resolving the surfaces of Charon and Pluto at scales of just kilometers," said Cathy Olkin, New Horizons deputy project scientist. "This will help us unravel the nature of their surfaces and the way volatiles transport around their surfaces. I can't wait; it's just a few weeks away!"

For more information about the New Horizons mission, visit NASA's website.