Category Archives: Pluto

dwarf planets, New Horizons mission, planets, Pluto

More Pluto!

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The Four Faces of Pluto. Courtesy NASA/APL/New Horizons mission

The Hits Just Keep Coming!

Take a look at these four faces of Pluto, dated from just about a week ago and see how much MORE detail we can see. New Horizons is getting closer each second and the proximity is starting to really pay off! Even though they’re not crystal clear (yet) you can clearly see more detailed areas of bright and dark. The images, taken with the Long Rainge Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), give us a telescopic view of the dwarf planet at varying distances. The big thing you notice, as Alan Stern (PI for the New Horizons mission pointed out, is that there are clear evidence of discrete equatorial bright and dark regions. “We can also see that every face of Pluto is different and that Pluto’s northern hemisphere displays substantial dark terrains, though both Pluto’s darkest and its brightest known terrain units are just south of, or on, its equator. Why this is so is an emerging puzzle,” he said.

The comparison, released today with the latest images, really are just an appetite-whetter — although the science teams are wringing every bit of science out of every image they get. The reward is they get to see tantalizing hints of what will turn out to be a complex surface. The next step will be to figure out why the surface is the way it is, and with the flyby coming up, they’ll have ever-better images and data to help them figure it out. It’s a heck of a ride so far, so stay tuned!  (Want more info on the images? Check out this page on the New Horizons site.)

Here’s a little animation to enjoy, too!

New Horizons mission, Pluto

High Noon on Pluto: What’s it Like?

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Get Ready for Pluto

Artist's conception of New Horizons at Pluto and Charon. Courtesy: JHUAPL/SwRI
Artist’s conception of New Horizons at Pluto and Charon. Courtesy: JHUAPL/SwRI

As the New Horizons spacecraft enters its final five-week dash to Pluto, the news hits just keep rolling in. Yesterday, I talked about the tumbling moons affected by the orbits of Pluto and Charon. I expect we’ll find more information about them as the spacecraft gets closer, plus some more new images to whet our appetites for all things Pluto.  Five weeks from now, it will be Pluto Partay time, for sure!

Have you ever wondered what it is like on the surface there? Of course, we already know that it’s icy and cold. The presence of nitrogen ice on the surface tells us it’s cold enough on Pluto to freeze this gas (which happens at -195.8 C). The mean surface temperature at Pluto is -229 C (44 K), and that’s mighty cold.  The atmosphere, while thin, is mostly nitrogen, with contributions from methane and carbon monoxide. As Pluto moves away from the Sun in its 248-year orbit, most of that atmosphere will “freeze out” and fall to the ground as a frost. So, it’s pretty clear things are distinctly chilly at the planet.

The Sun doesn’t do a lot to warm things up. It’s too far away to provide the kind of heat we take for granted here on Earth.  And, due to that distance, days aren’t as bright on Pluto as they are here on warm, comfy Earth. Now, New Horizons isn’t going to land on Pluto; it’s a flyby mission. And, it will be a long time before anybody has the chance to send people to Pluto. But, there is a way to experience Pluto’s lighting conditions for yourself. It’s called “Pluto Time”.   There’s a time between dawn and dusk when the lighting conditions where you are will be just like it is at noon on Pluto.  It’s easy to do; just go to the Pluto Time web page at NASA and follow the directions. In  less than a minute, you’ll know when the next “Pluto Time” at your location occurs. You can take a picture of what Pluto Time looks like wherever you are and share it with others, too. I encourage you to check the page out; you’ll be surprised at what you find out about how bright/dim it is at this distant dwarf planet.