NASA's New Horizons Returns Images of the Canyons of Pluto's North Pole (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: NASA's New Horizon space probe, which flew by Pluto last July, continues to send data and images that amaze and awe. The space agency released an image of Pluto's North Pole taken by the probe's Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The image shows, as has previous images of other regions of the so-called dwarf planet, that Pluto is a diverse world with an active geology. The North Pole of Pluto is characterized by long canyons that are covered in yellow methane ice. The canyons show how the dwarf planet had, and perhaps still has active tectonics..

Comments

We must not let the Soviets expand the canyon gap

[NotDrWho]

We must make them AMERICAN canyons!

Neat!

[CaptainLard]

To break up the usual parade of strained jokes on science articles, how bout posting your favorite cool new thing that we learned from New Horizons? To start...

Pluto has a large mass of frozen nitrogen on its surface that supports many "hills". These may be composed of water ice (less dense than N ice) that float on the slowly shifting nitrogen ice "sea" like an iceberg!

Re:Neat!

[Jason Levine]

My favorite thing is that Pluto is so cold, that it has water ice "rocks" that are harder than rocks on Earth. Just when we think we've figured out everything, we find something else in the Universe that completely blows away our expectations (in the best possible way).

Re:Neat!

[jIyajbe]

Agreed! Also, volcanoes on Charon that erupt with water-based lavas! https://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history/

Re:Neat!

[Applehu Akbar]

" your favorite cool new thing that we learned from New Horizons? "

My vote goes to the finding of active tectonics. This implies heat, which is coming from...where?

Re:Neat!

[Ranbot]

Honestly, that there are any significant geologic processes at all, much less ones that can form these immense and varied landscapes. Pluto and Charon are so small and so far away the Sun that I think most scientists expected Pluto and Charon to be almost featureless balls of ice apart from a few meteor craters.

This also proves planet-like objects (whatever the classification) can have stable, self-sustaining, internal sources of energy and/or volcanism independent of the energy of our Sun or another star. We fixate on "Goldilocks" planets like Earth stable enough to sustain life, we should probably expand the search possibilities.

Meteors

[jIyajbe]

I was surprised at the number of (what appear to be) meteor craters; I knew that Pluto is in the Kuiper belt, but I always had the impression that the density of that belt was really low. OTOH, Pluto has been wandering around that region for billions of years, so I guess that adds up over time. Very cool!!

Plaudits to the New Horizons team! Yay science!

Re:VERTICAL canyons? Is there any other kind?

[jIyajbe]

I believe they mean "from the top of the image downward towards the bottom of the image".

Have Spacesuit Will Travel

[Cornwallis]

I can imagine Kip and Peewee slogging through that landscape...

Re:Looks so young

[tnk1]

It is likely being resurfaced with tectonic or volcanic activity. Of course, because Pluto is so cold the "vulcanism" is actually things like water "volcanos", but the resurfacing effect would be very similar as the water will solidify into a smooth surface on Pluto much like cooling lava on Earth and warmer planets.

Re:Buffering

[Applehu Akbar]

Because of the slowness of the data link and the fact that NH is barreling away from Earth at high speed, the strategy has been to send all the JPGs first, then the Raw images. It is these, trickling back, that we are seeing now, that are giving us these new revelations so long after the flyby,

When all the high-res images have been uploaded, NH can be repurposed for a new flyby in the Oort Cloud.