At first glance, the latest panoramic images of Pluto returned by NASA’s New Horizons probe are just gorgeous shots of a far-off world, but closer analysis reveals something surprising – the presence of an Earth-like weather cycle on the increasingly fascinating dwarf planet.
The backlit panorama shows what the US space agency refers to as “breathtaking views” of the “majestic icy mountains, streams of frozen nitrogen, and haunting low-lying hazes” which can be found on Pluto’s surface, but it also captures a landscape not that different from the arctic.
Taken by New Horizons’ wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on September 13, these new photos show the landscapes of the dwarf planet with backlighting from the sun. They show the world’s various terrains as well as its atmosphere, capturing a 780 mile (1,250 kilometer) long slice of Pluto’s surface.
“This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself,” New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado, explained in a statement. “But this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains.”
Scientists find evidence of nitrogen-based glacial cycle
Among the new revelations provided by the MVIC image are new details about the hazes that can be found throughout the dwarf planet’s nitrogen atmosphere. More than a dozen thin layers of haze are shown, extending from near-ground level to at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. It also reveals at least one bank of low-lying, fog-like haze, NASA said.
The newfound hazes “hint at the weather changing from day to day on Pluto, just like it does here on Earth,” said Will Grundy, head of the New Horizons Composition team at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. When combined with other images the spacecraft recently sent back, they provide strong evidence that Pluto has a “hydrological” cycle similar to that found on our homeplanet, but with soft, exotic ices instead of traditional water ice.
Located to the east of the ice plain known as Sputnik Planum is a region that has apparently been covered by these same ices. Scientists believe they originally evaporated from the surface of the plains and were redeposited to the east. Images also reveal glaciers flowing back into Sputnik Planum from this area, much like the frozen streams found on the ice caps of Greenland.
“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. “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.”
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Feature Image: NASA
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