Pluto's Haze

Today brings another release of images from NASA's New Horizons probe. This time, it includes an image taken seven hours after closest approach, when the probe was looking back at Pluto. It captured the dwarf planet in silhouette: the body of the planet is in darkness, but the atmosphere is luminous with deflected sunlight. "A preliminary analysis of the image shows two distinct layers of haze -- one about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 kilometers)." Before this picture, scientists didn't expect to see such haze more than 30 kilometers above the surface.

Other findings released today include preliminary indications that Pluto's atmospheric pressure has dropped sharply from early observations. This may indicate that the atmosphere is in the process of freezing and falling to Pluto's surface. Finally, new close-up pictures of the surface transmitted back to Earth show direct evidence of nitrogen ice floes reminiscent of glacier movement on Earth. The dwarf planet also seems to be rich in methane ice and carbon dioxide ice.

Comments

Help me, Help me, oh no...

[RevWaldo]

Pluto haze all in our brains
Latest readings don't seem the same
An exciting time, you all agree
For studyin' exometeorology

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Re:Miles

[hcs_$reboot]

Is anyone else embarrassed that NASA uses miles as its primary unit of measure?

Indeed, I was expecting distances expressed in furlongs.

Re:dwarf is a trigger word

[frovingslosh]

If there are nine people in a room but someone wants to draw a lot of attention to himself he can point to the shortest person and call them a dwarf person and so claim that there are really only eight people in the room.