NASA releases a colorful, psychedelic video of Pluto

“One side of the camera can only see light of one specific wavelength of infrared light (light that has longer wavelengths than can be seen by our eyes), and each row of pixels can see a subtly different wavelength”, read NASA’s description about the camera. Sort of. The instrument is LEISA, New Horizons’ infrared imaging spectrometer. The dark bands come when Pluto’s methane ice absorbs those materials and it results into festive mix of red, green and little blue color when the results plug into visible color channels.

It seems like the dwarf planet was the obvious choice for the Christmas makeover since it is known as the coldest planet of the solar system.

In fact, NASA also released this red-and-green Pluto image today, which serves quite literally no other objective other than giving the agency something to publish on Christmas Eve.

The aforementioned linear filter lets light with wavelengths as short as 1.25 microns to fall on the image sensor’s one side, and smoothly changes to allow light with lengthy wavelengths of 2.5 microns to fall on the image sensor’s far side. But what about a “real movie?’ Alex Parker, a research scientist working on NASA’s New Horizons mission, gives us a attractive, colorful movie titled Pluto Through Stained Glass: A Movie from the Edge of the Solar System”.

In other news Engadget reported, Pluto may have been imaged six ways from Sunday, but it’s clear that the New Horizons probe still has a few surprises up its sleeve.

The linearly-varying filter of the infrared spectrometer produces a stained glass window effect as it looks for reflected chemicals. Eventually, you have 256 slices of Pluto that will all fit together to make a picture of it. But how about giving Pluto some Christmas spirit?

Using this technique, the New Horizons team was able to confirm the existence of water ice on the planet, and the very same technique helped the team discern that ammonia ice exists on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.

The image itself, which you can check out in full size here, was taken from about 67,000 miles away on July 14, which was when New Horizons was closest in its flyby of Pluto.