Mapping the Surface of Pluto via Light-curve Inversion

Ever since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has presented scientists with a great challenge: in ground-based images it is completely unresolved, while even the Hubble Space Telescope produces an image which is only a few pixels across. However, as Pluto orbits the Sun and rotates, its brightness varies as surface features move in and out of view from Earth. We present albedo maps of the surface based on these variations. We utilize light curves spanning many decades, because the changing inclination of the rotation axis to the line of sight allows us to better constrain the latitudes of surface features that would be possible for a fixed inclination.