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.
And zooming in on the centre of the image brings the mountains and plains into even sharper focus. The latest round of photos sent by New Horizons is showing the surface features of Pluto in great details.
“Pluto is surprisingly Earth-like in this regard and no one predicted it”, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said in an interview with NASA. The backlit photograph additionally reveals new particulars about Pluto’s nitrogen-dominated environment, displaying many various layers, extending from ground-bound fog to wispy tendrils greater than 60 miles (100 km) up. He also said that the image is a scientific bonanza that reveals new details about Pluto’s environment and land forms.
“Along with being visually lovely , these low-lying hazes trace on the climate altering from each day on Pluto, identical to it does right here on Earth”, Will Grundy, chief of New Horizons’ composition staff from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, stated in.
“I can hardly wait until we get even better imagery – up to seven times better pixel scale – that’s still to come of select areas of the surface and to see what new surprises Pluto has in store”. The New Horizons images capture icy mountain ranges named Norgay Montes and Hillary Montes, which rise 3,500 meters above Pluto’s surface. NASA believes that the ice may have been evaporated and deposited.
“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”, added Alan Howard, member of the mission from University of Virginia. No one can predict that the Pluto is Earth-like in this case said by the Stern.
The photo of the fog or haze, combined with evidence taken from other photos, hints that Pluto may have something very much like Earth’s hydrological cycle, only involving ice made of substances other than water, such as nitrogen.