Nitrogen ice glaciers seen flowing on Pluto

These new images of Pluto may very well be the highest-resolution images that we’re going to get of Nix, Hydra, Charon and Pluto.

It has been just over 10 days since New Horizons’ closest flyby of Pluto and NASA is already saying that the mission has surpassed all expectations. Recent pictures recovered by the spacecraft reveal Earth-like landscapes and geological activity on Pluto, underscoring the planet’s complexity.

Seven hours after its nearest approach, New Horizons turned back towards Pluto to take a photo with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).

“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt”, he said in a statement. Models suggest that the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart methane gas.

Space agency officials could hardly be more excited about the newest discoveries-the fruit of New Horizons’ July 14 flyby that took the spacecraft within 7,800 miles of Pluto’s surface.

The image below highlights this reddish tint. When close-up images are combined with color data from the Ralph instrument, it paints a new and surprising portrait of the dwarf planet.

Some of this ice flows like glaciers, despite the balmy ambient temperature of 390 degrees below zero. The geology appears just like glaciers on Earth, New Horizons mission leaders said.

As for the ice flows, they appear to be relatively recent: no more than a few tens of millions of years, according to William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis.

“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars”, said mission co-investigator John Spencer. “I’m really smiling.”

It’s evident now that the two “lobes” of the heart are quite different; Stern speculated that nitrogen snow could possibly be blowing from the brighter left, or western, side to the right. The melting point for nitrogen is -346 degrees Fahrenheit.

With the new images of Pluto sent back by the spacecraft, scientists want to analyze the composition of Pluto’s atmosphere by examining the distortions occurring to radio signals transmitted from Earth as it passed through the dwarf planet’s atmosphere.

The world eagerly awaits more data and photos from New Horizons, imagining what other secrets the distant planet may hold.

These Plutonian mountains are smaller than a previously discovered Pluto mountain range, called the Norgay Montes, in honor of the first Nepalese man to scale Mount Everest in 1953, said scientists. Instead, Pluto’s surface ice consists mostly of nitrogen.

Check out the crater in the same image.

But more importantly, it seems that the planet’s atmosphere is experiencing dramatic shifts as Pluto is moving along its elliptical orbit, farther and farther away from the Sunday.