Pluto: a measured position and an imagery contract that respects flyby coverage

Measured facts

Classification

Dwarf planet

Mean radius

1,188 kmPublished mean radius stored as renderer geometry.

Mean diameter

2,377 km

Mean radius in Earth radii

0.187

Appearance

Raster provider foundation · assets pending

Observation epoch

No observational appearance integrated

What you are looking at

The New Horizons LORRI and Ralph MVIC products give Pluto uneven global coverage: a single flyby resolves one hemisphere far better than the other. A renderer that ignored this would imply uniform detail that does not exist.

The registered contract therefore requires a coverage mask and per-product resolution before integration, so a later mosaic cannot silently fill unobserved longitudes.

Until then the body is a mean-radius proxy at its published radius, positioned from the same validated archive as the planets.

Distance, scale and light time

Distances here are computed from the shipped JPL Horizons state archive, sampled once per day across its declared coverage (2020-01-01 00:00 TDB through 2040-01-01 00:00 TDB). Because both bodies move on different orbits, the separation changes constantly; the figures below include the dates at which the extremes occur.

Distance from Earth

34.730 AU · 5,195,594,854 kmAt the recorded snapshot epoch 2026-08-29 00:00 TDB, one-way light time 4.81 hours.

Distance from the Sun

35.587 AU · 5,323,793,322 kmComputed in the same epochs and frame (Earth-centred ecliptic J2000.0 / ICRF).

Delivery and camera limits

COSMOS stops the camera at 1.08 mean radii for Pluto. This body has no observational imagery integrated yet, so only an educational-geometry limit applies.

Appearance status

Raster provider foundation · assets pending

Renderer provider id

pluto-visual-v1

Closest permitted approach

1.08 mean radiiEducational geometry limit only; no observational surface imagery is integrated for this body yet.

Rotation model

Approximate static display orientation — Not yet a selected-date body-fixed solutionNo external orientation kernel is used for this body.

Geometry

mean-radius-sphereMean-radius sphere; no ellipsoid or terrain displacement yet

Provenance

Appearance provenance is carried by the provider at runtime, not added by the page: no appearance layer is registered for this body, so only geometry and position are claimed.

Category

artist-educational-representationNo provider-supplied appearance record exists yet; this is the registry classification.

Registry source

NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics

Limitations COSMOS discloses

• Appearance incomplete; no observational surface or atmosphere claimed
• No New Horizons imagery is integrated; the raster contract remains pending.
• No far-side detail will be fabricated to complete a globe.
• Charon is not yet a navigable destination, and no barycentric state is claimed for the pair.
• Position is interpolated inside 2020-01-01 00:00 TDB through 2040-01-01 00:00 TDB; requesting an epoch outside that window is rejected instead of extrapolated.