Ice On Pluto, Planet Has Blue Skies and Water Ice, Says NASA
Although it may not be the mind-shattering storm of information previously expected, it seems remarks made by Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, about a huge announcement regarding Pluto were mostly true. NASA has announced two significant findings: that the dwarf planet has atmospheric hazes, and that it has exposed regions of water ice.
The Ralph spectral composition mapper on the New Horizons spacecraft has collected data and discovered sheets of water ice on Pluto's surface, according to NASA.
"Large expanses of Pluto don't show exposed water ice because it's apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into," said science team member Jason Cook, of the Southwest Research Institute.
The areas with the most obvious water ice signatures were directly linked to the areas of the planet that appeared bright red in the most recently received images from New Horizons. NASA has found the correlation to be somewhat puzzling.
"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red. We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface," said Silvia Protopapa, of the University of Maryland, College Park, according to NASA.
In addition to the discovery of water ice, New Horizons took the first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, revealing their blue coloring.
"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Stern of the discovery.
The particles of the haze are most likely gray or red, but the scattering of blue light from them has caught the attention of the New Horizons team. The blue color suggests the presence of nitrogen molecules, larger than those on Earth, but still quite small, known as tholins, according to Carly Howett of SwRI.
The scientists think that the tholin particles form high up in the atmosphere, when nitrogen and methane molecules are broken up and ionized by ultraviolet light. This then allows them to react with one another to form more and more complex negatively and positively charged ions, according to NASA.
Upon recombination, they form macromolecules, which NASA found to occur in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. The more complex molecules combine and grow continually, until they become small particles. Then their surfaces are coated with ice frost by volatile gases, and they fall to the surface, adding to the red coloration of Pluto.
New Horizons is currently 3.1 billion miles away, and is still operating healthily and normally, according to NASA.
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