![Sharpest ever images of Pluto show mottled world
by Rachel Courtland, reporter [via New Scientist]
Pluto may take 248 years to orbit the sun, but its surface is changing at a much faster rate, new images reveal.
The erstwhile planet, which celebrates the 80th anniversary of its discovery this month, has long been a fuzzy dot to telescopes. But new Hubble Space Telescope images unveiled today reveal the best views yet of Pluto’s mottled, multi-coloured terrain.
Creating the images from data taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys was no small feat. Each image was only a few pixels across, and hundreds had to be combined together to produce the relatively high resolution images, the LA Times reports. “This has taken four years and 20 computers operating continuously and simultaneously to accomplish,” says Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The team also created a video of Pluto rotating; watch it here.
Pluto is being spritzed with grayish dust by two of its three moons. But it maintains an overall red colour because its surface harbours methane frost, which breaks down into a dark red, carbon-rich residue when exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
The new images, taken in 2002 and 2003, confirm that Pluto’s surface is actively changing. For reasons that are still mysterious, Pluto’s appearance remained constant for some 50 years of observations before its surface colour became 20 to 30 per cent redder over two years at the beginning of the decade. Over the same period, Pluto’s northern hemisphere also brightened, while its southern hemisphere darkened. This appears to be due to ice vaporising in the sunlit north and refreezing in the wintry south, NASA says.
These observations could help reveal more about the dwarf planet’s weather, which is affected not only by its tilt but by the planet’s elongated – rather than circular – path around the sun.
The atmosphere of Pluto has baffled astronomers because it has continued to warm and thicken even as Pluto has moved away from the sun. This could be because of a greenhouse effect: methane ice may be warmed enough by the sun to turn into gas when Pluto is close-in. This gas could then keep temperatures up, warming more ice as the dwarf planet recedes from the sun.
The new images could help NASA target observations for the New Horizons spacecraft, which will fly past Pluto in 2015 so quickly that it will only be able to photograph one hemisphere in detail. One intriguing locale is an unusually bright spot that other observations indicate is rich in carbon monoxide frost.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxdsgsqfV51qa32ieo1_500.jpg)
Sharpest ever images of Pluto show mottled world
by Rachel Courtland, reporter [via New Scientist]
Pluto may take 248 years to orbit the sun, but its surface is changing at a much faster rate, new images reveal.
The erstwhile planet, which celebrates the 80th anniversary of its discovery this month, has long been a fuzzy dot to telescopes. But new Hubble Space Telescope images unveiled today reveal the best views yet of Pluto’s mottled, multi-coloured terrain.
Creating the images from data taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys was no small feat. Each image was only a few pixels across, and hundreds had to be combined together to produce the relatively high resolution images, the LA Times reports. “This has taken four years and 20 computers operating continuously and simultaneously to accomplish,” says Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The team also created a video of Pluto rotating; watch it here.
Pluto is being spritzed with grayish dust by two of its three moons. But it maintains an overall red colour because its surface harbours methane frost, which breaks down into a dark red, carbon-rich residue when exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
The new images, taken in 2002 and 2003, confirm that Pluto’s surface is actively changing. For reasons that are still mysterious, Pluto’s appearance remained constant for some 50 years of observations before its surface colour became 20 to 30 per cent redder over two years at the beginning of the decade. Over the same period, Pluto’s northern hemisphere also brightened, while its southern hemisphere darkened. This appears to be due to ice vaporising in the sunlit north and refreezing in the wintry south, NASA says.
These observations could help reveal more about the dwarf planet’s weather, which is affected not only by its tilt but by the planet’s elongated – rather than circular – path around the sun.
The atmosphere of Pluto has baffled astronomers because it has continued to warm and thicken even as Pluto has moved away from the sun. This could be because of a greenhouse effect: methane ice may be warmed enough by the sun to turn into gas when Pluto is close-in. This gas could then keep temperatures up, warming more ice as the dwarf planet recedes from the sun.
The new images could help NASA target observations for the New Horizons spacecraft, which will fly past Pluto in 2015 so quickly that it will only be able to photograph one hemisphere in detail. One intriguing locale is an unusually bright spot that other observations indicate is rich in carbon monoxide frost.
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