NASA has released more photographs of Pluto taken by its New Horizons spacecraft in July. And what it reveals is incredible.
Pluto, once the ninth planet in the traditional solar system, now classified as a dwarf planet, has long been a mystery. But on July 14, New Horizons came closer to the tiny world than any other spacecraft, revealing a complicated world that no one had imagined.
READ MORE: In Photos: Images of Pluto reveal complex world
The spacecraft — which will continue to download data collected in that flyby for more than a year — revealed mountains, plains and even the haze of an atmosphere that extended out into space farther than planetary scientists had anticipated.
These new photos reveal Pluto — once shrouded in mystery — in new detail.
One image shows the crescent of Pluto with icy peaks rising from its surface.
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Another photo takes a closer look at the same region, (definitely check out the high-resolution image here). Its peaks rise about 3,500 metres, towering over the smooth area informally called Sputnik Planum.
“This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “But this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains.”
Not only were the surface features highlighted in the newly released images, but so was Pluto’s atmosphere.
Due to the position of the sun relative to the Pluto, the camera on-board New Horizons was able to capture haze in the nitrogen atmosphere. More than a dozen layers stretch about 1,000 km above the surface.
Scientists were also able to capture cloudy conditions near the surface.
“In addition to being visually stunning, these low-lying hazes hint at the weather changing from day to day on Pluto, just like it does here on Earth,” said Will Grundy, lead of the New Horizons Composition team from Lowell Observatory.
As well, a photograph from the spacecraft shows unexpected activity: ice — likely comprised of nitrogen rather than water — appears to be draining from Pluto’s mountains into Sputnik Planum.
“We did not expect to find hints of a nitrogen-based glacial cycle on Pluto operating in the frigid conditions of the outer solar system,” said Alan Howard, a member of the mission’s Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “Driven by dim sunlight, this would be directly comparable to the hydrological cycle that feeds ice caps on Earth, where water is evaporated from the oceans, falls as snow, and returns to the seas through glacial flow.”
The findings illustrate that Pluto, once believed to be uncomplicated and boring, holds more in common with Earth than we may have thought.
“Pluto is surprisingly Earth-like in this regard,” added Stern, “and no one predicted it.”
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