HONG KONG: During a close flyby with Pluto in July, New Horizons has captured a beautiful image of the dwarf planet. Lately, NASA has released the false-color view of Pluto. NASA said that it has intentionally added more colors to highlight many subtle color differences in the dwarf planet’s different regions.
NASA shared the information that the spacecraft has taken the images when it was around 22,000 miles from Pluto’s surface on July 14. The image was released this week at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Maryland.
Scientists said that the flyby has brought in many surprises for them like ice volcanoes. NASA even announced that scientists working with New Horizons have found two ice volcanoes that have chances of being active in recent past. The volcanoes have been named as Wright and Piccard.
Oliver White, New Horizons postdoctoral researcher, was of the view, “These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing – a volcano. If they are volcanic, then the summit depression would likely have formed via collapse as material is erupted from underneath”.
NASA scientists do not think that these volcanoes would be involved into spewing molten rock the way it happens on earth. There is no doubt that the finding of the mountains is making things clear for scientists who are trying to know why Pluto looks like the way it is now.
