The latest images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have
scientists stunned – not only for their breathtaking views of Pluto’s
majestic icy mountains, streams of frozen nitrogen and haunting
low-lying hazes, but also for their strangely familiar, arctic look.
Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy
Hazes: Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14,
2015, NASA’s 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’s 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 over a
dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s 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.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
This new view of Pluto’s crescent -- taken by New Horizons’
wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14
and downlinked to Earth on Sept. 13 -- offers an oblique look across
Plutonian landscapes with dramatic backlighting from the sun. It
spectacularly highlights Pluto’s varied terrains and extended
atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across.
Closer Look: Majestic Mountains and Frozen Plains:
Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015,
NASA’s 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’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named
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. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of
haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken
from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene
is 230 miles (380 kilometers) across.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
“This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying
the landscape for yourself,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator
Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “But
this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about
Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains.”
Near-Surface Haze or Fog on Pluto: In this small
section of the larger crescent image of Pluto, taken by NASA’s New
Horizons just 15 minutes after the spacecraft’s 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).
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Owing to its favorable backlighting and high resolution, this MVIC
image also reveals new details of hazes throughout Pluto’s tenuous but
extended nitrogen atmosphere. The image shows more than a dozen thin
haze layers extending from near the ground to at least 60 miles (100
kilometers) above the surface. In addition, the image reveals at least
one bank of fog-like, low-lying haze illuminated by the setting sun
against Pluto’s dark side, raked by shadows from nearby mountains.
"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," said Will Grundy, lead of the New Horizons Composition team
from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.
Combined with other recently downloaded pictures, this new image also
provides evidence for a remarkably Earth-like “hydrological” cycle on
Pluto – but involving soft and exotic ices, including nitrogen, rather
than water ice.
Pluto’s ‘Heart’: Sputnik Planum is the informal
name of the smooth, light-bulb shaped region on the left of this
composite of several New Horizons images of Pluto. The brilliantly white
upland region to the right may be coated by nitrogen ice that has been
transported through the atmosphere from the surface of Sputnik Planum,
and deposited on these uplands. The box shows the location of the
glacier detail images below.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Bright areas east of the vast icy plain informally named Sputnik
Planum appear to have been blanketed by these ices, which may have
evaporated from the surface of Sputnik and then been redeposited to the
east. The new Ralph imager panorama also reveals glaciers flowing back
into Sputnik Planum from this blanketed region; these features are
similar to the frozen streams on the margins of ice caps on Greenland
and Antarctica.
Valley Glaciers on Pluto: 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’s 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.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
"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, Charlottesville. “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.”
“Pluto is surprisingly Earth-like in this regard,” added Stern, “and no one predicted it.”
Intricate Valley Glaciers on Pluto: This image
covers the same region as the image above, but is re-projected from the
oblique, backlit view shown in the new crescent image of Pluto. The
backlighting highlights the intricate flow lines on the glaciers. The
flow front of the ice moving into the informally named Sputnik Planum is
outlined by the blue arrows. The origin of the ridges and pits on the
right side of the image remains uncertain. This image is 390 miles (630
kilometers) across.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Last Updated: Sep. 17, 2015
Editor: Tricia Talbert