The Moon, Europa

The Moon, Europa

Friday, September 18, 2015

Pluto - Images from the New Horizons Spacecraft

Finally, some new images from New Horizons!

This shot of Pluto's atmosphere is stunning!
Pluto's mountains, frozen plains and foggy hazes

The closeup of the mountains is amazing as well. However...
Pluto's mountains, frozen plains and foggy hazes

The feature I found most remarkable is a potentially active nitrogen glacier! The ices may have evaporated from the surface and fallen into the mountains, re-compressed into solid ice again and flowed back onto the plain; a cycle nearly identical to water ice (snow) on Earth falling in the mountains, being compressed into ice and flowing downward in the form of a glacier.
Valley Glaciers on Pluto

Apologies for the first photos getting cut off on the top of the page but I wanted to post them as large as possible. The the full story and complete set of photos may be viewed the NASA link below:
Pluto - Backlit Panorama and Glacial Flows