Colorful NASA Map Spotlights Plutonian Heart Shaped Tombaugh Regio

Summary: A colorful NASA map spotlighting Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio distinguishes Pluto's terrain for New Horizons scientists via 31 color codes.

Map of left side (western lobe) of Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio feature uses colors to represent Pluto’s varied terrains. Color coded terrains help scientists understand complex geological processes at work on the dwarf planet: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL)/Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Public Domain, via NASA

A colorful NASA map spotlighting the Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio helps New Horizons mission scientists to decipher the dwarf planet’s surprisingly complex geology, according to NASA’s news release Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.

The colorful NASA map’s color coding system distinguishes differing geological terrains in a 1,290 mile (2,070 kilometer) segment of Pluto’s surface. Each of the 31 color codes is linked to distinctive terrain that is characterized by morphology, or shape, and texture. Plains account for 10 color codes. Terrain materials take up nine color codes.

As a detailed survey of the western lobe of Pluto’s heart, the colorful NASA map includes the Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), informally named after Earth’s first artificial satellite. Launched into a low Earth orbit (LEO) Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 completed 1,440 circles of the globe and logged 43.5 million miles (70 million kilometers) before burning up Jan. 4, 1958, during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

The blues and greens in the map’s center capture Sputnik Planum’s textural range, spanning the plain’s pitted and smooth southern plains as well as the central and northern cellular terrain. Purple areas represent the blocky, chaotic mountain ranges marking Sputnik Planum’s western border. Scattered, floating hills lining Sputnik’s eastern border appear as pink units.

Informally named Cthulhu Regio lies along Sputnik Planum’s western edge as a whale-shaped surface feature. Dark brown units represent Cthulhu Regio’s rugged highlands. Yellow units identify its many large impact craters.

Redness in the colorful NASA map’s southern corner identifies Wright Mons, informally named to honor the famous flying Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur. NASA scientists suspect that the enormous feature, measuring a diameter of about 90 miles (150 kilometers) and a height of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers), could be a cryovolcano. A composite image of Wright Mons, taken July 14, 2015, at a distance of about 30,000 miles (48,000) by News Horizons space probe’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) reveals a perplexingly sparse distribution of red material on Wright Mons.

“Also perplexing is that there is only one identified impact crater on Wright Mons itself, telling scientists that the surface (as well as some of the crust underneath) was created relatively recently. This in turn may indicate that Wright Mons was volcanically active late in Pluto’s history,” states NASA’s news announcement, released Jan. 14, 2016, along with the “Pluto’s Wright Mons in Color” image.

NASA’s New Horizons mission scientists glean details of relative chronology by studying boundary overlying-underlying crosscuts between units. For example, the yellow color code for craters in the map’s western portion (to the left) describes a “well preserved impact crater” that likely formed after surrounding geological features.

“Producing such maps is important for gauging what processes have operated where on Pluto, and when they occurred relative to other processes at work,” explains the map’s Feb. 11 news release by editor Tricia Talbert.

The colorful NASA map of the western lobe of the Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio is imaged at a resolution of 1,280 feet (about 390 meters) per pixel. A mosaic of 12 images captured by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the creative scientific assemblage responsible for the colorful geologic map of the western lobe of the Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio.

Launched Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006, the New Horizons interplanetary space probe has missions of the first reconnaissance of the Pluto system and of first explorations of Pluto’s neighborhood, the Kuiper Belt. As a circumstellar disc, the Kuiper Belt extends over a region with estimated parameters of 30 to 100 astronomical units AU (4.4 billion to 14.9 billion kilometers) from the sun.

With its downgrade from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, Pluto joins Haumea, discovered in 2004, and Makemake, discovered in 2005, as the Kuiper Belt’s three official dwarf planets. Haumea’s namesake is the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth. Makemake is named for the creator and fertility god of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Pluto’s namesake is the ancient Roman god of the underworld.

Map of left side (western lobe) of Plutonian heart shaped Tombaugh Regio feature uses colors to represent Pluto’s varied terrains. Color coded terrains help scientists understand complex geological processes at work on the dwarf planet: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL)/Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Public Domain, via NASA

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Pluto’s Sputnik Planum: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL)/Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Public Domain, via NASA @ http://www.nasa.gov/feature/putting-pluto-s-geology-on-the-map

Map of left side of Pluto’s heart-shaped feature: NASA/The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL)/Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Public Domain, via NASA @ http://www.nasa.gov/feature/putting-pluto-s-geology-on-the-map

For further information:

"Dwarf Planet 136472 2005 FY9 Named Makemake." USGS Astrogeology Science Center. July 14, 2008.
Available @ http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/news/nomenclature/dwarf-planet-136472-2005-fy9-named-makemake

Fox, Steve. "Pluto's Wright Mons in Color." NASA. Jan. 14, 2016.
Available @ http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/pluto-s-wright-mons-in-color

Marriner, Derdriu. "High Resolution Images From New Horizons Flyby Past Pluto." Earth and Space News. Monday, Dec. 7, 2015.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/12/high-resolution-images-from-new.html

Marriner, Derdriu. "Ice Volcanoes May Erupt Ammonia, Methane, Nitrogen or Water on Pluto." Earth and Space News. Friday, Nov. 13, 2015.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/11/ice-volcanoes-may-erupt-ammonia-methane.html

NASA‏ @NASA. "It may look like art, but this map is helping us understand geological processes on Pluto." Twitter. Feb. 11, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/NASA/status/697925199535214593

Talbert, Tricia. "Putting Pluto's Geology on the Map." NASA. Feb. 11, 2016.
Available @ http://www.nasa.gov/feature/putting-pluto-s-geology-on-the-map