P41E-02
Charon as Seen by New Horizons in the Infrared

Thursday, 17 December 2015: 08:18
2022-2024 (Moscone West)
Cristina Dalle Ore1, Dale P Cruikshank2, Alan Stern3, Leslie Ann Young4, Kimberly Ennico Smith2, William M Grundy5, Catherine Olkin4, Harold A Weaver Jr6 and New Horizons Surface Composition Science Theme Team, (1)SETI Institute Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, United States, (2)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (3)Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ, United States, (6)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States
Abstract:
Charon, the largest satellite of Pluto, is a gray-colored icy world covered mostly in H2O ice, with spectral evidence for NH3, as previously reported (Cook et al. 2007, Astrophys. J. 663, 1406–1419; Merlin, et al. 2010, Icarus, 210, 930; Cook, et al. 2014, AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts, 46, #401.04). Images from the New Horizons spacecraft reveal a surface with terrains of widely different ages and a moderate degree of localized coloration. New Horizons observed Charon at high spatial resolution (better than 10 km/px) with the LEISA imaging spectrometer. LEISA is part of the Ralph instrument (Reuter, D.C., Stern, S.A., Scherrer, J., et al. 2008, Space Science Reviews, 140, 129) and affords a spectral resolving power of 240 in the wavelength range 1.25-2.5 µm, and 560 in the range 2.1-2.25 µm.

We present results obtained from the analysis of high spatial resolution data obtained close to flyby.

<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>