New pictures of Pluto, which NASA scientists managed to pick up from the New Horizons spacecraft, shows the dwarf planet in an unexpected light. With so close and so high-resolution surprisingly tight it resembles Earth. And, as the researchers point out, not only visually.
- Thanks photo you can feel as if there was personally watching the scenery Pluto – said on the above photograph, Alan Stern, conducting team of researchers analyzing the data from the New Horizons spacecraft. – But it is also a mine of scientific data, betraying new information about the atmosphere, the formation of mountain glaciers and plains Pluto – he added.
New images, taken by NASA just made were just 15 minutes after crossing the New Horizons point of the shortest distance from Pluto. Since the dwarf planet’s surface when the probe separated only 18,000 km. The width of all the above panorama is 1250 kilometers.
Sunrise over Pluto can be observed by a special arrangement of the probe when taking pictures. Passing the dwarf planet so she turned to catch her against the sun. Obtaining this phenomenal visual effects, however, was not the primary goal of scientists. Such illumination of the surface is also a source of relevant information.
- Besides, it looks amazing, these hovering low over the surface of Pluto vapors are for us a sign that the weather changes there in the day-night cycle, as well as on the Earth – said Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Together with other downloaded last time images can also constitute a proof of the existence of a kind of “water cycle” Pluto – like the planet. There is, however, not in an atmosphere circulating water, and hydrogen.
- We did not expect the discovery of Pluto based on hydrogen cycle of glaciation, occurring under freezing conditions at the edge of the solar system. Powered by residual sunlight is directly comparable to the hydrological cycle on Earth where water evaporates from the oceans falls as snow on the glaciers and returning them to circulation – said Alan Howard, a member of the team geological mission of New Horizons.
- In this respect, Pluto is surprisingly similar to Earth, and nobody foresaw – echoes earlier quoted Stern.
A more detailed pictures of Pluto no longer live to see – at least not in the coming years. Now before NASA’s next challenges. After leaving the Solar System it went in the direction of the Kuiper Belt.
New Horizons mission team hopes that the probe will be thoroughly examined at least one belonging to the Kuiper Belt of asteroids and dwarf planets. This, however, will depend on whether NASA agrees to extend the mission. The decision is to be adopted in 2016, but scientists are hopeful.
- While the debate on the extension of the mission will be conducted in the broader context of the whole of our planetary exploration, we expect that it will be much less costly than the main part of the expedition’s New Horizons, and yet still capable of providing new and exciting scientific data – said John Grunsfeld, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
DG
See also: Delightful film with Pluto
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