Pluto has EVENLY spaced huge dark spots!

originally posted by: charlyv
Dark spots in a longitudinal direction could be impact blemishes from Pluto rotating under an incoming broken up comet or asteroid. Chain cratering on the Moon and Mars are similar to this, as well as what we saw when Jupiter was rotating under the incoming broken up comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9 .

Bingo ! Exactly what I thought.

Guys its obviously a DRONE

a reply to: Okeyd57

i don't know, pluto would have a ring of debris if that was the case, 4 - 300 mile wide in diameter impact craters? I mean what percentage of the planet did that encompass then? 50%???

originally posted by: abeverage
I am going to laugh myself silly if there are claims of a camera artifact...

Wouldn't be the first time that excuse has been used to cover something up! Nice catch!

originally posted by: Okeyd57

originally posted by: charlyv
Dark spots in a longitudinal direction could be impact blemishes from Pluto rotating under an incoming broken up comet or asteroid. Chain cratering on the Moon and Mars are similar to this, as well as what we saw when Jupiter was rotating under the incoming broken up comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9 .

Bingo ! Exactly what I thought.

I thought the impacts from Shoemaker-Levy showed up latitudinally?

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

They follow a rough line of latitude, but cover a considerable number of degrees longitude.

and it didn't totally destroy the planet-oid?


a reply to: charlyv

shadows of Charon

a reply to: redtic

originally posted by: charlyv
Dark spots in a longitudinal direction could be impact blemishes from Pluto rotating under an incoming broken up comet or asteroid. Chain cratering on the Moon and Mars are similar to this, as well as what we saw when Jupiter was rotating under the incoming broken up comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9 .

The more I look at them the more I like the idea that these dark blemishes are a continuation of the much larger continuous blemish on the opposite hemisphere - one long skid then a few bounces!

Here endeth the wild conjecture

a reply to: 3danimator2014
No but , some things just look to obvious to wrap around a story that doesn't even fit the picture. ..

a reply to: onebigmonkey

I wrote a poorly worded guess along these lines on the second page. Pluto and Charon have a pretty close mass, so I would think the gravity they share would possibly make my scenario possible rather than a catastrophic collision between them? I can imagine an orbit in which charon was getting too close over eons and just started to make contact for a few orbits, but as it rolled across the surface some rocky irregularity jolted it back out. I've forgotten how to do the mass attractions between objects from my uni days, but I would think that pluto/charon would be possibly the gentlest system amongst our solar systems planets (yes, it's still a planet to me, don't listen to those bullies Pluto, you'll have a growth spurt one day!)

a reply to: UnderKingsPeak

Probably 'crop circles'. Text Red

a reply to: Rocker2013

It would really interest me to see the 'surface' of Jupiter, and S.L. impacts.

If there is an atmosphere on Pluto, as suggested, then the dark spots would most likely by expanding soot and ash from the impact crater ejecta being blown up into the upper atmosphere. The actual impacts would be physically much smaller. I do think this is probably the nature of this phenomena, but when the camera gets closer, we are going to know.

originally posted by: Darkblade71
a reply to: Rocker2013

That's all a part of the fun, getting the imagination going in anticipation of new knowledge!

Speculation is a fun thing!

Speculation is one thing, being so ignorant of a subject that you embarrass yourself with impossible beliefs is another.
Speculation could be that these spots are caused by weather systems within the gas in the outer reaches of the planet, idiocy is claiming that there could be buildings or structures each almost the size of our own planet being built by an alien race in a gigantic cloud of gas.

Those images with dark spots are still too low-rez to make any definite guesses; what we need now is better images of that area. Keep visiting the LORRI camera archive in hope of seeing that side of Pluto at closer distances: pluto.jhuapl.edu...

Here's a 100%-scale comparison between the "spots" shot of Pluto taken on June 27th (left) and the latest image from July 3rd (right), to illustrate the difference in resolution:



With the OP's "spots" image being enlarged and enhanced, I cannot rule out that the image artifacts may have played a role in the resulting appearance.

The New Horizons space probe approaching Pluto suffered a technical fault on Saturday. It is currently able to communicate with Earth, but is in safe mode, which means that it is unable to do any new photography, or other scientific work for the moment.
The mission team will analyze diagnostic data from the probe, to try to learn the nature of the problem. They hope to put New Horizons back into normal operations within a day or two, ahead of the Jul. 14th flyby of Pluto. Link to news article on this matter:
www.nbcnews.com...

originally posted by: Ross 54
The New Horizons space probe approaching Pluto suffered a technical fault on Saturday. It is currently able to communicate with Earth, but is in safe mode, which means that it is unable to do any new photography, or other scientific work for the moment.
The mission team will analyze diagnostic data from the probe, to try to learn the nature of the problem. They hope to put New Horizons back into normal operations within a day or two, ahead of the Jul. 14th flyby of Pluto. Link to news article on this matter:
www.nbcnews.com...

Can't resist to play the devil's advocate here... NASA spotted something they don't want us to see, and invented this supposed "malfunction" as an excuse for not giving us those new images. Either that, or the aliens disabled the spacecraft to prevent us from discovering what we shouldn't know.

At the moment, all we have is a series of dark blobs that appear to be evenly spaced. We don't know whether they are depressed areas, albedo variations or even an atmospheric phenomenon. Perhaps they are a series of slow moving storms. Why don't we wait a few days until we can see them better before we start speculating.

Technical glitches like this are typically encountered by interplanetary spacecraft. They are usually corrected in short order, permitting the mission to proceed. In the case of New Horizons, there are added complications.
1.) A very low data rate, due to its great distance from Earth, and the resultant weak radio signals. 2.) A radio signal takes over four hours to reach New Horizons, and a reply from it a similar period to return to us.
If numerous back and forth exchanges are required to set things right, this will begin to eat into the time for the space probe to perform its observations when nearest Pluto.