A moon with a broken-looking belt
Processed image. Grayscale LORRI photographic view of Serenity Chasma from 14 July 2015, published with a scale bar. The original camera-image caption gives a range of 78,717 kilometres. Deposits at the canyon walls were interpreted as long run-out landslides. This is photographed terrain, not a recording of a slope collapsing or the separate rendered perspective view. Native published image: 617 × 342 pixels; zoom adds no new detail.
NASA factual/editorial media guidelines · credited mission imagery, resized to WebP; no endorsement implied
· Original image source · Image licenceCharon’s cliffs and varied terrains reward a closer pass.
- World
- Charon
- Case date or period
- Flyby observations · 13–14 July 2015
Look closer
New Horizons revealed extensive canyons and a contrast between terrains on Charon. The global view helps locate the scarps before closer images reveal the complexity of their walls.
Follow the evidence
The camera images and mosaics preserve different illumination and processing. One product overlays stereo-derived elevation in colour; areas lacking suitable data remain unmeasured. Compare cliff outlines and height information without treating the palette as surface colour.
Extension permits more than one interior history
Ross Beyer and colleagues inferred roughly one percent early global surface expansion from Charon’s tectonic features, consistent with an ancient ocean freezing. Uri Malamud, Hagai Perets and Gerald Schubert tested another route: compaction, differentiation and chemical reactions can generate contraction and expansion without requiring a vast ocean. Their thermal evolution model proposes episodes that could help form the belt. The observed fractures constrain the strain, while the cause depends on assumptions about the interior and its starting state; a canyon photograph does not reveal a buried ocean directly.
The canyon walls keep traces of collapse
Open the close camera view and follow the canyon walls into the deposits below them. Mission researchers identified long run-out landslide traces here. The still photograph preserves their shapes, rather than catching a collapse in progress. Its scale bar helps compare the deposits with nearby craters, while the global portrait locates the canyon belt. A separate publisher perspective rendering reconstructs the relief; the gallery uses the photographed terrain so the viewing geometry stays traceable.
Sources & further reading
- Charon in Detail — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Charon's Surface in Detail — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Charon Surprising Youthful and Varied Terrain — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- The contraction/expansion history of Charon — Malamud, Perets and Schubert — Original author research paper
- Charon tectonics — Beyer and colleagues — Icarus / MIT original institutional archive
- Landslides on Charon — original Serenity Chasma camera view — NASA / New Horizons mission