New Calculations Uncover a Vast Ocean Beneath Pluto’s Ice
Graduate student Alex Nguyen calculated the depth and density of the solar system’s most mysterious and remote body of water. New calculations by Alex Nguyen,…
Pluto News
Pluto, once considered the ninth planet of the Solar System, is now classified as a dwarf planet within the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system beyond Neptune filled with small icy bodies. Discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory, Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice and is known for its highly elliptical orbit and rotational period of about 6.4 Earth days. It has five known moons, with Charon being the largest and so massive relative to Pluto that they are often considered a binary system. Pluto’s reclassification in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union to a dwarf planet sparked widespread debate and interest in its status. The New Horizons mission in 2015 provided the most detailed images and data on Pluto, revealing a complex and varied surface with mountains, plains, and possibly even liquid oceans beneath its icy crust.
Mystery Solved: The Cosmic Collision That Crafted Pluto’s Heart
The mystery of how Pluto got a giant heart-shaped feature on its surface has finally been solved by an international team of astrophysicists led by…
Scientists Use Occultation Event To Confirm Decrease in Pluto’s Atmospheric Density
When Pluto passed in front of a star on the night of August 15, 2018, a Southwest Research Institute-led team of astronomers had deployed telescopes…
Spectacular Snowcapped Mountains Discovered on Pluto Are Very Different to Those on Earth
In 2015, the New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had…
Earth vs. Pluto: Snowy and Icy Peaks with Very Different Origins
Like Earth, the dwarf planet of Pluto has mountains. Like their earthly cousins, some of those peaks are covered in blankets of white. But the…
Opposite World: Pluto’s Ice Caps Made of Methane, Turns Earth’s Process Upside Down
The mountains discovered on Pluto during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015 are covered by a blanket of methane ice,…
Evidence Pluto Started Out With Liquid Oceans That Have Been Slowly Freezing Over Time
Evidence Supports ‘Hot Start’ Scenario and Early Ocean Formation on Pluto A new study suggests that Pluto and other large Kuiper belt objects started out…
NASA’s Telescope on an Airplane – SOFIA – Finds Clues Hidden in Pluto’s Haze
When the New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto in 2015, one of the many fascinating features its images revealed was that this small, frigid world…
Pluto’s Icy Heart Heart Beats Daily, Pumping Nitrogen Winds Around the Dwarf Planet
A “beating heart” of frozen nitrogen controls Pluto’s winds and may give rise to features on its surface, according to new research. Pluto’s renowned heart-shaped…
Scientists Believe Pluto May Have a Hidden Subsurface Ocean
Computer simulations provide compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto’s icy exterior, according to…
New Evidence Why Pluto Should Be Reclassified As A Planet
The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research from the University of Central Florida. In 2006, the International Astronomical…
Forty Years of Discovery on Pluto’s Moon Charon
Before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through the Pluto system in July 2015, many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world….
Newly Discovered Dunes on Pluto Reveal a Diverse and Dynamic Dwarf Planet
Newly discovered dunes on Pluto tell us the dwarf planet’s geology and atmosphere is far more dynamic than previously expected, with the winds of its…
New Horizons Reveals Dunes Made of Tiny Grains of Solid Methane on Pluto
Dunes are known to form on Earth, Mars, Venus, Titan, and Comet 67P – and now on the dwarf planet Pluto, according to a new…
Pluto’s Moon Charon Gets First Official Feature Names
Legendary explorers and visionaries, real and fictitious, are among those immortalized by the IAU in the first set of official surface-feature names for Pluto’s largest…
Tidal Heating May Help Preserve Oceans on Icy Worlds
Heat generated by the gravitational pull of moons formed from massive collisions could extend the lifetimes of liquid water oceans beneath the surface of large…
Hydrocarbon Haze Keeps Pluto Cooler Than Expected
Observations from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft show that Pluto is much colder than predicted, suggesting that atmospheric haze works as a novel cooling mechanism. The…
Astronomers Solve the Mystery of Pluto’s Giant Blades of Ice
New research reveals that the strange formations on Pluto’s surface are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of…