Apologies if you’ve seen this, but it’s new to me.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151109

From possible ice volcanoes to geologically diverse surfaces to oddly behaving moons that could have formed through mergers of smaller moons, Pluto system discoveries continue to surprise scientists on NASA’s New Horizons mission team. The New Horizons team is discussing numerous findings at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Just four months after the spacecraft encountered Pluto, science team members are presenting more than 50 reports on exciting discoveries.

These two mountains have central craters (in bluer colours) suggesting that they’re ice volcanoes.

The distribution of 1,000 craters indicates a wide range of surface ages, which means that Pluto has been geologically active throughout its history.

“The absence of small craters on Pluto and Charon support models theorizing that Kuiper Belt objects formed directly at their current large size.”

Pluto’s small satellites are spinning much faster than expected, with Hydra rotating an unprecedented 89 times during a single lap around Pluto.

Pluto’s upper atmosphere is significantly colder and therefore more compact than Earth-based models had indicated. As a result, scientists have discovered that Pluto’s atmospheric escape rate is thousands of times lower than had been thought.

See also, from Oct 16. “The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons”.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1510/1510.07704.pdf

This article contains the first scientific results and post-flyby interpretations from the New Horizons Pluto flyby, organized according to the objects in the system.

Pluto, Geology and imaging, etc.

Images not to be missed in this article:

1. Histogram of albedo for Pluto and Charon compared. Pluto’s is bimodal with the dark equatorial region contrasting with the brightness of Sputnik Planum and the Polar Cap. Charon’s is almost unimodal, except for the unusually dark Polar Cap. Does anyone else think it strange that the polar cap is the brightest part of Pluto and the darkest part of Charon?

2. False-color Ralph images showing high methane concentrations in the bright ice from Sputnik Planum, and high CO concentrations in the same areas.

Have the boffins discovered why the heart-shaped area is so smooth?

Divine Angel said:

Have the boffins discovered why the heart-shaped area is so smooth?

Something to do with liquid nitrogen I think. Though CO and CH4 also freeze at fairly low temperatures.

No it’s not a micrograph of bacteria, it’s a picture of pits in the surface of the smooth part of Pluto. For more see http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151125.html

mollwollfumble said:

No it’s not a micrograph of bacteria, it’s a picture of pits in the surface of the smooth part of Pluto. For more see http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151125.html

Bloody NASA! If it was smooth it wouldn’t have pits – der.

So it has been confirmed that the next target will be 2014 MU69, a KBO around 45 km across.

Unlike Pluto, 2014 MU69 has low orbital eccentricity and low inclination, and fairly uncoloured.

The encounter will take place on 1 January 2019.

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In the mean time, New Horizons will take long distance images of other KBOs near its path. It is a bit mind-boggling to consider what counts as “near” in the context of the Kuiper Belt. For instance, two months ago New Horizon imaged 1994 JR1 at a distance of 280 million km, about twice the distance the earth is from the sun.