Speckled image gives the sharpest view of Pluto and Charon yet

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Speckled image gives the sharpest view of Pluto and Charon yet

Even though Pluto and its largest moon Charon are in our solar system, the only images we’ve taken of the dwarf planet have been really blurry. This one isn’t much better, but it’s the best we’ve got so far. In the upper right is Pluto and Charon is down at the bottom of the image.

This blurry image of Pluto and Charon may not seem that impressive at first glance, but consider this: The resolution here is equivalent to separating a pair of car headlights in Providence, Rhode Island, from a viewing spot in San Francisco. This is the clearest image ever taken in visible light of our favorite dwarf planet and its largest companion.

Scientists using the Gemini Observatory used the “speckle method” to obtain this image, which involves taking a lot of snapshots and then stitching them together. Each picture was a 60 millisecond exposure, or about 1/20th of a second. Instead of using adaptive optics to cancel out Earth’s atmospheric turbulence and other artifacts, the speckle method combines the light from each object in each picture, which remains constant.

The result is a clear image (for astronomers, anyway) that shows the precise diameters of each celestial body and how they interact with one another. This will help the upcoming New Horizons mission, which is en route to Pluto for a 2015 arrival.

Via