| HOME | DATA & SERVICES | ABOUT THE ATMOSPHERES NODE | CONTACT US | SITE MAP | RELATED SITES |
Ralph/MVIC - visible imager
Overview
MVIC operates at visible wavelengths and has 7 different detectors. Four have color filters for producing color maps. One filter is tailored to measure the methane frost distribution over the surface, while the others are more generic and cover blue, red and near-infrared colors, respectively. MVIC also has three panchromatic detectors, which pass essentially all visible light, for when maximum sensitivity to faint light levels is required. In all cases, the light passes from the telescope through a filter and is focused onto the charge coupled device (CCD).
MVIC uses two large format (5024x32 pixel) CCD arrays to provide panchromatic (400 to 1000 nm) hemispheric maps of Pluto at a double sampled spatial resolution of 1 km by 1 km or better. Four additional 5024x32 CCDs provide hemispheric maps in blue, red, Near IR and narrow band methane color channels. These 6 arrays all operate in time delay integration (TDI or pushbroom) mode to increase sensitivity. In addition to the TDI arrays, MVIC has a 5024x128 element frame transfer array. For each of the arrays, the 12 pixels at both edges are not opically active.
The MVIC description was was adapted from Reuter et al. (2005), the MVIC section of the SOC Instrument ICD, Reuter et al. (2007), and the New Horizons website.
The Ralph/MVIC Tabs
The tabs associated with this page describe the Ralph/MVIC data files and how to obtain and use them.
- About Ralph/MVIC Data - Organization of the archive and links to key documents
- Accessing Data - Links to the data volumes