On July 14 , this unprecedented range of a function perpetually changed our view of Pluto . But New Horizons did not beam this pic to Earth as you see it here . It make it unassembled : harsh , lossy , colorless . Revealing Pluto ’s true face would require some drive , and a specialized squad of scientist with an … unconventional name .
At Science , Eric Hand recounts the striking story of how this now - iconic image of Pluto occur to be , and how it was intimately lost :
They called themselves the Union of Amalgamated Pluto Colourists , a half - joking name for a collective with American , British , and Canadian root . Two of them , Simon Porter and Tod Lauer , would polish the raw black and blank images . Another two , Carly Howett and Alex Parker , would overlay color information . John Spencer , a senior scientist on the missionary work , was to manage the effort . All were worked up , running on minuscule sleep , and to the full cognisant of the double ’s viral potency . They had been instruct not to e-mail the mental image around — thus the ovolo drives — or to even talk about it . The usual data pipeline — a set of servers at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder , Colorado — had been keep out down to fix access to the files . “ There was a lot of sensitiveness about this image , ” Howett says . “ We understood as a team why that was . ”
This is some great science save about an event that could well have been lost to history . Do register the intact story for yourself over at Science .
meet the author at[email protect ] .
AstronomyNew HorizonsPlutoScience
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