PIA00825: The Surface of Pluto
 Target Name:  Pluto
 Is a satellite of:  Dwarf Planet
 Mission:  Hubble Space Telescope
 Instrument:  Faint Object Camera 
 Product Size:  2573 x 1945 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Lowell Observatory
 Producer ID:  STSCI-PRC96-09A MRPS87785
 Addition Date:  1998-03-28
 Primary Data Set:  Space Telescope Science Institute
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA00825.tif (591.8 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA00825.jpg (196.1 kB)


Original Caption Released with Image:


Discovered in 1930, Pluto has always appeared as nothing more than a dot of light in even the largest Earth-based telescopes because Pluto's disk is much smaller than can be resolved from beneath the Earth's turbulent atmosphere. Pluto is 2/3 the size of Earth's Moon but 12,000 times farther away. Viewing surface detail is as difficult as trying to read the printing on a golf ball located thirty-three miles away!

Hubble imaged nearly the entire surface of Pluto, as it rotated through its 6.4-day period, in late June and early July 1994. These images, which were made in blue light, show that Pluto is an unusually complex object, with more large-scale contrast than any planet, except Earth.



The larger images (bottom) are from a global map constructed through computer image processing performed on the Hubble data. The tile pattern is an artifact of the image enhancement technique.




Image Credit:

Image Addition Date: