P44B-08
The Chasmata and Montes of Charon
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 17:45
2005 (Moscone West)
Ross A Beyer1, Paul Schenk2, John R Spencer3, Jeffrey M Moore1, Francis Nimmo4, Olivier S Barnouin5, Alan Stern6, Harold A Weaver Jr7, Catherine Olkin3, Kimberly Ennico Smith8, Leslie Ann Young3, William B McKinnon9 and New Horizons Science Team, (1)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (2)Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, United States, (3)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)University of California-Santa Cruz, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA, United States, (5)JHU Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, MD, United States, (6)Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (8)NASA Ames, Moffet Field, CA, United States, (9)Washington University in St Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States
Abstract:
The New Horizons spacecraft made the first-ever high-resolution observations of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, on 14 July 2015. Those observations returned views of complicated topography on this icy world in the outer solar system. Charon posseses a series of chasmata and fossae that appear to form an organized tectonic belt that spans across the disk of the Pluto-facing hemisphere and may extend beyond. In addition, there are enigmatic, isolated mountains visible that are surrounded by depressions. These, in turn, are surrounded by a relatively smooth plain, broken by occaisional rilles, that stretches from these montes northward up to the chasmata region. We will discuss these features and more.
