{"id":16055,"date":"2015-09-18T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T16:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/haunting-sunset-vista-shows-foggy-hazes-on-pluto\/"},"modified":"2015-09-18T00:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T16:01:09","slug":"haunting-sunset-vista-shows-foggy-hazes-on-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/haunting-sunset-vista-shows-foggy-hazes-on-pluto\/","title":{"rendered":"Haunting sunset vista shows foggy hazes on Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Just
Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto\u2019s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) 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. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto\u2019s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide. Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A crescent Pluto stars in pictures captured just after NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft\u2019s July flyby of the distant dwarf planet, exposing eerie backlit fog banks and glacial flows that scientists say hint at an Earth-like weather cycle.<\/p>\n

But instead of Earth\u2019s water-driven hydrological cycle, Pluto has soft, exotic ices like nitrogen that scientists believe might flow across the surface like glaciers and sublimate into a gaseous state to form haze layers in the frozen world\u2019s thin atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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,\u201d said Will Gundy, the New Horizons composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.<\/p>\n

The latest view of Pluto released by NASA on Thursday was captured about 15 minutes after New Horizons made its closest approach July 14. The spacecraft beamed the image from New Horizons\u2019 Ralph instrument\u2019s wide-angle camera Sept. 13.<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Huge mountains likely composed of water ice tower above Pluto\u2019s surface in the picture, which reveals stunning topographic relief on the icy world\u2019s rugged landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself,\u201d said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. \u201cBut this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto\u2019s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Horizons is still sending back images from its July 14 encounter with Pluto. The probe is flying more than 3 billion miles from Earth, and its communications link only allows data to stream back to the ground at about 2 kilobits per second, much slower than a dial-up Internet connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe image shows more than a dozen thin haze layers extending from near the ground to at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface,\u201d officials wrote in a NASA press release. \u201cIn addition, the image reveals at least one bank of fog-like, low-lying haze illuminated by the setting sun against Pluto\u2019s dark side, raked by shadows from nearby mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wide-angle view covers a scene 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

\"n
In this small section of the larger crescent image of Pluto, taken by NASA\u2019s New Horizons just 15 minutes after the spacecraft\u2019s closest approach on July 14, 2015, the setting sun illuminates a fog or near-surface haze, which is cut by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers), and the width of the image is 115 miles (185 kilometers). Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The vast icy plain scientists have informally named Sputnik Planum appears in the image captured by the Ralph instrument. Geologists think nitrogen vapors \u2014 and perhaps frozen methane or carbon monoxide \u2014 from Sputnik Planum may be lofted into Pluto\u2019s atmosphere to rain down elsewhere on the dwarf planet.<\/p>\n

Sputnik Planum makes up the western lobe of Pluto\u2019s bright heart-shaped region discovered by New Horizons. The eastern lobe appears to be made of a different material, and scientists believe it may be the dumping ground for molecules that evaporate from Sputnik Planum.<\/p>\n

The new image from the Ralph camera also shows glaciers flowing back into Sputnik Planum from the blanketed region to the east, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

\"Ice
Ice (probably frozen nitrogen) that appears to have accumulated on the uplands on the right side of this 390-mile (630-kilometer) wide image is draining from Pluto\u2019s mountains onto the informally named Sputnik Planum through the 2- to 5-mile (3- to 8- kilometer) wide valleys indicated by the red arrows. The flow front of the ice moving into Sputnik Planum is outlined by the blue arrows. The origin of the ridges and pits on the right side of the image remains uncertain. Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The flows have analogs on Earth, scientists said. They appear similar to features identified on the edges of ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not expect to find hints of a nitrogen-based glacial cycle on Pluto operating in the frigid conditions of the outer solar system,\u201d said Alan Howard, a member of the mission\u2019s geology, geophysics and imaging team from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. \u201cDriven 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPluto is surprisingly Earth-like in this regard, and no one predicted it,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto\u2019s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2174,2848],"class_list":["post-16055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}