Maybe you still haven't figured out how to say the name of Pluto's largest moon. Let me help. It's pronounced "WOW."
I don't want to interrupt your gasping with too many words, but here are some quick stats on the shot.
Draw your eyes to the dark area around the moon's north pole. "Informally we've been referring to that as Mordor," says Cathy Olkin, one of the mission's top planetary scientists, to the delight of everyone. Trace your gaze down the right curve until you reach a notch, at about the 2 o'clock spot. That's a canyon. A big one, about four to six miles deep.
And that's not all. Move your eyes down and in and follow the huge sash of canyons banding across the planet's middle. This is about 600 miles across, and according to Olkin could be the result of internal processing. That's right, active geology.
Just as with similar details on Pluto, the team's speculations about what is causing this geology are so far guarded and vague.
But what's certain is that "something is making these two worlds very, very different," says Alan Stern, the mission's principal investigator. Pluto is covered in water ice, Charon has massive cliffs. But the shroud of mystery that covers both is being steadily removed.
