NASA’s New Horizons detect haze, flowing ice on Pluto

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PARIS: “It’s very hard not to call an object with this level of complexity in its geology, and such complex seasons, a planet“, said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute, during a press conference about the Pluto probe’s latest update.
Along with haze, the New Horizons’ trip to Pluto showed evidence of awesome ices flowing across the surface which outline traces of recent geologic activity.
The researchers detected hazes in the image that was taken of the tiny planet by New Horizons.
John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator for Science Mission Directorate at NASA stated that scientists at NASA were aware that some surprises should be expected from a mission to Pluto and with 10 days having passed after the closest flyby, they are happy that these expectations have been more than fulfilled. “At Pluto’s temperatures of minus-390 degrees Fahrenheit, these ices can flow like a glacier”, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics, and Imaging team deputy leader Bill McKinnon explained. New Horizons has taken a slew of photographs of Pluto over the past two months, as it made its approach to the dwarf planet, but few have been as incredible as the most recent picture of the sun backlighting Pluto. Models suggest that the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles – a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere.
The one of the images reveals the hazes in the surfaces of the planet, and the hazes are nearly 130 km above from the surface. What’s more is the haze New Horizons captured apparently had two layers divided almost down the middle. First, scientists didn’t expect the hazes to rise more than 20 or 30 miles, but in this case they go up to about 50 miles. Located on the western half of the Pluto’s heart-shaped feature, an ice sheet within the plain appears to have flowed similar to glaciers on Earth and it may still be flowing.