BRENT: Stunning new images of Pluto backlit by the sun reveal a landscape of majestic mountains, foggy plains and hazes.
The images, taken on July 14 by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 18,000 kilometres give Pluto a “strangely Arctic look”, NASA scientists said.
The oblique view in the first two images above highlights the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 3,500 metres high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline.
To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.
“This image is … a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains,” New Horizons principal investigator Dr Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, said.
Close-up images reveal glaciers flowing into Sputnik Planum similar to frozen streams on the margins of the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.
The images also highlight more than a dozen layers of atmosphere extending at least 100 kilometres above Pluto’s surface, as well as fog banks, suggesting the dwarf planet may have its own weather system.
“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,” Dr Will Grundy, lead of the New Horizons Composition team from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, said.
But, unlike Earth, the hydrological cycle on Pluto is likely to consist of soft and exotic ices including nitrogen rather than water, they said.
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