冥王星的真彩色影像

2019 September 10

Pluto in True Color
Image Credit: NASA, JHU APL, SwRI, Alex Parker

Explanation: What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging. The result featured here, released three years after the raw data was acquired by New Horizons, is the highest resolution true color image of Pluto ever taken. Visible in the image is the light-colored, heart-shaped, Tombaugh Regio, with the unexpectedly smooth Sputnik Planitia, made of frozen nitrogen, filling its western lobe. New Horizons found the dwarf-planet to have a surprisingly complex surface composed of many regions having perceptibly different hues. In total, though, Pluto is mostly brown, with much of its muted color originating from small amounts of surface methane energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun.

冥王星的真彩色影像
影像来源: NASA, JHU APL, SwRI, Alex Parker

说明：冥王星到底是什么颜色的？这需要费些功夫才能弄清楚。即使考虑到2015年新视野号宇宙飞船在飞越冥王星时传回地球的影像，处理这些多光谱影像以接近人眼所看到的景象也是一个挑战。这幅特征影像是新视野号获得原始数据三年后公布的，这是迄今为止拍摄的冥王星最高分辨率真彩色影像。影像中可见的浅色心形区域是汤博区，由冰冻氮构成、异常平滑的斯普特尼克号平原占据了它的西叶。新视野号发现这颗矮行星有一个由许多具有明显不同色调的区域所组成的复杂表面。不过，总的来说，冥王星大多是棕色的，大部分黯淡的颜色则来自于太阳紫外线激发的少量表面甲烷。