science · 04 February 2010 · 15 years ago
In 2010, NASA released the most detailed views to date of the entire surface of the dwarf planet Pluto, as constructed from multiple NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken in 2002-03. They imaged an icy world that shows seasonal changes in its mottled surface coloring and brightness. One view showed a mysterious bright spot, unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. The raw Hubble images of Pluto are only a few pixels wide. Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado led a science team to develop special algorithms to sharpen that data. Their dithering technique combined multiple, slightly offset pictures through computer-image processing to synthesize a higher-resolution view. That work took four years and used 20 computers in continuous, simultaneous operation.
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