Pluto

[Don. Edwards]

Johnnya,
Pluto is one big ice cap. The whole planetoid is made of ice and frozen gases and unless it has some kind of substantial atmosphere there would be no mechinism to move lighter elements to the poles. None of the ice moons really have any polar caps to speak of. Triton kind of does but Triton is almost twice the size of Pluto.

Everyone else,
I will post it with a bumpmap tomorrow. Look for it in the textures section of the forum.

[Guest]

It could be a tad browner...
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[Guest]

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/dencherman/vwp?.dir=/Planets&.src=ph&.dnm=Pluto.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/dencherman/lst%3f%26.dir=/Planets%26.src=ph%26.view=t

[fsgregs]

Jim:

I like your texture. It seems a good color match to the NASA photos Selden provided a link to. I also have no problem using Ganymede as a base texture. They probably are quite similiar.

Don, your texture also looks good, but I do have two comments. First, I would have to agree with our guest that it should be browner. I think it is too pink to match the pictures from NASA that Selden put us onto. Second, we can all only guess, but I suspect it is visually as crisp and bold a texture as Mercury or the Moon for 99% of its year. What appears to be haze around its equator may only be present for a tiny amount of time as its atmosphere vaporizes from sublimed frost for a few weeks. If it is haze and not a trick of my eyes, I would reduce it at least 30% more.

I also agree that Pluto probably has lots of ice and may even be a captured comet. If so, it is not unreasonable to play up the icy part of its texture, perhaps even with a nice spec map.



Frank

[ogg]

Interesting to compare the Hubble albedo map and the one Selden mentioned. (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010319.html)

if Don's texture incorporates the right albedos then it's the sort of texture that will answer the call made by the creator for this thread: a texture actually based on the best data we have. It sounds like the best strategy to me; though the ideal texture would also have the colour matched more closely and the mutual-event albedos/colours for the Charon-side integrated into it...

more links stumbled across:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~efy/PMap01 ... oMaps.html
http://www.lowell.edu/users/buie/pluto/plutomap1.html

[Don. Edwards]

Well everyone who wants to can hope over to the textures section and under "Pluto Hybrid Texture" they can see the latest picture of the texture I put togather and you can try it yourselves as I have the download ready.

[t00fri]

..and one day, when you are tired of this Ganymed-Triton phantasy, you can use precisely the information from the images in Selden's link and make yourself quickly a correct 2k map with /exactly/ the right colors;-)

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Here are some zoom views from Celestia. My 2k Pluto texture incorporates /all/ information that is known. The original HST cylindrical map (=>Selden) colorized by the recent color photos (=>Selden). The only phantasy consists in some 'borrowed' ice-cracks from Europa;-)...Of course one might blend in any other surface appearance to give the texture some structure when looked at close distance, /without/ modifying the /correct/ appearance for longer-distance views.

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Contents removed. I am going to sleep now!

Don.

[selden]

Don,

Just a minor quibble so people don't get mislead: I've never created a colored Europa surface texture.

I think Fridger was referring to the links that I found to NASA web pages about Pluto.

[fsgregs]

I have to agree that the color of Fridger's Pluto is very close to the NASA photos, but I like the granulation of Don's surface. Might I suggest a blended texture of Ganymede and Europa, with the same light brown tint shading as Fridger's. Unfortunately, I don't have the software to do it.

Frank

[t00fri]

I have to agree that the color of Fridger's Pluto is very close to the NASA photos, but I like the granulation of Don's surface. Might I suggest a blended texture of Ganymede and Europa, with the same light brown tint shading as Fridger's. Unfortunately, I don't have the software to do it.

Frank

I think Don used Triton's texture, which is probaly better suited than Ganymed for blending, since it is not so 'characteristic'. Also Europa's 'ice cracks' that I used as a try, are somehow too familiar looking;-). I will go on experimenting a little.

In fact , my colors are /exactly/ equal to the colors in the TrueColor JPG that Selden found. GIMP does it easily for us;-). Also, I used the HST cylindrical map of PLuto in Selden's other link. I had to cut it out of the usual NASA 'boilerplate', extend it by 15 degrees (of 180) between -75 deg and -90 deg in latitude (by using Photoshop's 'patch tool), rescale it to 2k x 1k, do a 15 pixel Gaussian Blur on it and finally colorize it with the TrueColor image.

The resulting cylindrical map can be directly downloaded below in 1k version (for playing)

Now one may carefully blend this texture with another overlay, possibly Triton. I'll try that. But for large distance views I want the texture to precisely reproduce the scientific information we have (<=Selden).

Bye Fridger

PS: I have now substituted the original HST texture by one that has a (wrapped) offset of 0.5*width in accordance with recent Celestia conventions. This texture may be blended with my 'photometric eclipse' texture in the other department if desired.

Note there is 15 degrees of 'southern phantasy' between -75 degs and -90 degs to be completed by you, the user;-).

[t00fri]

Below you now can see my attempt to blend the previous HST-colored Pluto map with the texture from Triton which is rather uncharacteristic this way. I agree with Don that Triton may be a good solution. But note, in my textures, there is not much of Trition, actually. There is also a spec map and some careful specular lighting (reflections of sunlight from the ice crust!). The Truecolor Pluto photo is the one on the top-left. The other three are different Celestia views.

Bye Fridger

[selden]

While you're at it, you might want to consider a realistic map of Charon instead of the current imaginary one.

I found maps of Pluto and Charon on planetscapes.com at
http://planetscapes.com/solar/cap/index/pluto1.html
and
http://planetscapes.com/solar/cap/index/charon1.html

There are two rather different "real" maps of Pluto (maps 2 & 3). In addition to the resolution differences, I think they're rotated 180
degrees with respect to one another.

[t00fri]

While you're at it, you might want to consider a realistic map of Charon instead of the current imaginary one.

I found maps of Pluto and Charon on planetscapes.com at
http://planetscapes.com/solar/cap/index/pluto1.html
and
http://planetscapes.com/solar/cap/index/charon1.html

There are two rather different "real" maps of Pluto (maps 2 & 3). In addition to the resolution differences, I think they're rotated 180
degrees with respect to one another.

Thanks Selden! The two maps have both 720x360, one of them (map 3 ) seems to be just offset/mirrored? relative to what I had above. The two maps actually /blend/ nicely on top of each other;-). You will be surprised, there is much more detail with the two together. The release dates are also from 2001, i.e. very recent!

I'll go off working now;-)

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Guys,
There is one more thing we should or could take in consideration here. Ganymede is 5,262 km in diameter and Triton is 2,700 km in diameter and Pluto is only 2,300 km. We might consider that most of the smaller moons in the solar system are very cratered and some have quite large craters at that. I think Pluto and Charon being out in the fringes of Kuiper Belt would probably mean they would have some heavy cratering. What I am proposing is that along with using the Triton texture we might also integrate some nice cratering. I am not advocating making it look like Callisto now but maybe just a few areas of some heavy cratering. Now that I am home for the evening I will play with this a little and if I can create something interesting I will post a few shots. I saved the image Seldon posted above to integrate the color and albedo factors. I do feel this information is better than what I got from the earlier composite of Pluto's albedo map blended with the Ganymede texture.

Don.

[billybob884]

oh boy! i can't wait to see the finished texture!

[Don. Edwards]

Ok,
Here is the first very dirty little atemp. Its a conbination of a texture gereated with LunarCell and a fairly desaturated Triton texture. After the blending the Pluto color/albedo map was blended and adjusted in. The Triton texture is pretty forgiving when it comes to blending with other textures although it is a little on the blury side. It still gives an idea of what I said about adding some craters.



More to come as I try a few other things.

Don.

[HankR]

This is kind of interesting. What do we think Pluto actually looks like? Probably, as usual, it'll be unique. Not much like Ganymede or Triton or anything we've seen. (Hopefully we'll find out in 2015.) But beyond that, what is the best current educated (scientific) guess? I wonder...

- Hank

[Don. Edwards]

Ok here is another go-round. Three pictures please give me feedback.







As you can see I added a few nice size craters to the texture. Of course there may be an issue of there size. AS I said give me ideas.

Don.