Dec. 2, 2015

The public is invited to a free talk called “New Horizons: Journey to Pluto and Beyond” with Dennis Reuter in thePickford Theater, third floor, Madison Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Dec. 8, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET.
Dennis Reuter, a New Horizons co-investigator from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the instrument scientist for Ralph, the New Horizons color imager and infrared spectrometer. His talk will highlight the first close-up images of Pluto.
New Horizons has taken the first high-resolution views of the Pluto system, which represents an unexplored class of solar system bodies – small planets in the Kuiper Belt.

"Not only does Ralph allow us to ‘see’ things as if we ourselves were there, its infrared spectra will allow us to tell what specific molecules are on the surfaces of Pluto and its moons, how they are distributed, and what their environments are like," Reuter said.
"We've already seen how capable Ralph is from infrared and visible images taken of Jupiter in 2007 during the gravity assist maneuver that sped New Horizons to Pluto. The idea that planetary science will soon have that information for the Pluto system too is just remarkable!"

Image: New Horizons scientists made this false color image of Pluto using a technique called principal component analysis to highlight the many subtle color differences between Pluto's distinct regions. The image data were collected by the spacecraft’s Ralph/MVIC color camera on July 14 at 11:11 AM UTC, from a range of 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers). This image was presented by Will Grundy of the New Horizons’ surface composition team on Nov. 9 at the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland.