Photo of the Week: Pluto’s blue skies

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Blue skies, Kuiper Belt, New Horizons, photos, Pluto, water ice

Pluto’s blue haze is thought to be similar to that seen on Saturn’s moon Titan. Photo and caption courtesy of NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Another beautiful photo of Pluto was released this week along with news that the dwarf planet has blue skies and water ice. Incredible!

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, in a NASA release.

I certainly wouldn’t. And I’m no scientist.

Top 5 photos: New Horizons mission shows ice flow on Pluto, Charon’s young surface

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Charon, New Horizons, Photos of Pluto, Pluto, Pluto flyby, Sputnik

It’s been a little more than two weeks since New Horizons made its historic flyby of Pluto. Since then, new photos have trickled out to the masses, each one more interesting than the last. The images shine some light on the planet’s many mysteries, but they’ve also led to a lot more questions.

This photo of Pluto was made possible thanks to images taken by the New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager and color data from the Ralph instrument. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Working together: The left side of the heart-shaped area – informally known at Sputnik Planum – is composed of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ice. “The two bluish-white ‘lobes’ that extend to the southwest and northeast of the ‘heart’ may represent exotic ices being transported away from Sputnik Planum,” according to this NASA release. (FYI: Do you know the significance of “Sputnik”? It’s the name of the first satellite in Earth’s orbit.)

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

What flows there? Let’s talk a bit more about this “exotic” ice. Looking above, you’ll see a sheet of ice that’s found in that heart-shaped region we’ve seen many times over. The ice appears to either have flowed or is currently flowing. (Do you see the darker swirls?) That means Pluto is geologically active, like Earth and Mars.  According to NASA, the “swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.” Very cool.

Credits: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI

Young mountains: As high as 11,000 feet, these mountains were quite the surprise to the New Horizons team. These are the youngest mountains seen anywhere in our solar system. “Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape,” according to this release. Scientists believe the ranges were formed 100 million years ago. While that may seem old to us, our solar system is 4.56 billion years old. These mountains are practically babies.

Something’s going on. What’s inside Pluto? This “Pluto in a Minute” feature could help.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

HAZY: New Horizons didn’t stop taking pictures after it sped by the frigid world. More than 1 million miles away, the spacecraft snapped this beauty. Backlit by the sun, a ring of light can be seen surrounding Pluto. The haze extends out 60 miles further than scientists expected. “We’re going to need some new ideas to figure out what’s going on,” said Michael Summers, a New Horizons co-investigator at George Mason University. Learn more about this surprising find here.

NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI

Why so few craters? Pluto’s largest moon Charon is showing its youth, too. While you can see some craters on the surface, there are relatively few, leading scientists to believe that geological activity has reshaped the moon’s surface, too. Do you see the line in the middle of Charon? Those are cliffs and troughs believed to have been caused by some sort of internal process.

New Horizons is successful in flyby of Pluto

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NASA, New Horizons, Pluto, Pluto flyby

We’re going to let that message sink in. Congratulations to the entire New Horizons team! Bravo! 🙂

New Horizons makes historic flyby of Pluto

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flyby, New Horizons, Pluto, Pluto flyby, Pluto system

Image credit: NASA/JHU-APL/SWRI

I don’t typically wake up early in the morning, but when I do, it’s because … there was a historic flyby of Pluto! I woke up to this beauty after NASA posted the clearest picture it has of the dwarf planet so far.

It’s been an exciting morning as the New Horizons spacecraft made it closest approach to Pluto, completing a three-billion-mile plus journey to the outer reaches of our solar system. Now we wait until later this evening before we know how well New Horizons performed. Right now, it’s taking tons of scientific readings and images of the icy world.

In the meantime, we’ve compiled some social media reaction to New Horizons’ flyby of the Pluto system. Also, there’s some new information we learned so far. (They think it SNOWS on Pluto! How cool?!) Check out our Storify post.

New Horizons makes its final approach; highlights Pluto’s striking features

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Charon, flyby, New Horizons, Pluto

Pluto and Charon in a composite image from Saturday, July 11. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

How many of you are anxious about tomorrow? I feel like a kid waiting for the first day of school to begin. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

Tuesday morning, the New Horizons spacecraft will make its closest – and first ever! – approach to Pluto, an icy world that’s almost five billion miles away from Earth. We’ve been seeing picture after picture of the dwarf planet, each image becoming clearer than the last.

This is some groundbreaking stuff. Above, we see Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. That’s quite the difference from the photo we posted only days ago.

Below, we see more of Pluto’s features, including what could be cliffs and an impact crater.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

We’ve also learned that the dwarf planet is larger than we expected it to be. At 1,473 miles in diameter, “Pluto is larger than all other known solar system objects beyond the orbit of Neptune,” according to a NASA release.

The New Horizons spacecraft will zip by Pluto at an incredible 30,800 miles per hour tomorrow. But we won’t hear from the unmanned spacecraft until much later. Check out this Pluto in a minute feature and find out why:

Don’t forget to watch the Science Channel and NASA TV for updates throughout the day. We’ll also be tweeting, so feel free to follow. And share! 🙂

Pluto flyby begins – What answers will billion mile, nine-year journey bring?

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Charon, New Horizons, Photo of pluto, Pluto, Pluto flyby

READY FOR A CLOSE UP: Pluto as seen from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager July 8. (Image by NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI)

In four days, a spacecraft that has journeyed over three BILLION miles into the coldest reaches of our solar system will finally meet its maker.

All eyes will be on NASA’s New Horizons mission Tuesday, July 14, as the craft makes its closest approach to the enigmatic and highly beloved Pluto. (We’ll get a chance to see it all live on NASA TV and the Science Channel. Yah!) This will be the first time we’ll actually see up-close images of the dwarf planet, which has been shrouded in mystery since its discovery in 1930. The best photos we have so far are blurry at best. The picture above was taken Wednesday and it’s the most detailed image we have of the icy world.

“The science team is just drooling over these pictures. If you look at the new pictures now, it’s already five to six times better resolution than what we’ve been able to get before,” New Horizons scientist Hal Weaver told the Guardian.

The mission suffered a bit of a scare last week after an “anomaly” put the spacecraft into safe mode. Apparently the main computer overloaded after it received too many commands. Some science was lost, but only a fraction of all the data collected.

It was minor speed bump, says NASA:

There’s no risk that this kind of anomaly could happen again before flyby, as no similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.

That’s good to know. It’s been nine years since NASA launched New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth. Can you even remember what you were doing in 2006? That’s the year Blu-Ray was released in the U.S., the Nintendo Wii made its debut, and ironically, Pluto was demoted from the “planet” to “dwarf planet” status.

Nine years is a long time to wait. But finally, the time has come. New Horizons has already begun making its flyby observations and with each passing day, we get a chance to know more than we did yesterday. What type of atmosphere does Pluto have? What’s on the surface? What’s up with the mysterious bright spot near the north pole? What’s its temperature? These are just a few of the many questions scientists hope to have solved. But most likely, more questions will be raised than answered. (That’s OK! It’s the best kind of science.)

Eyes on Pluto. Shooting my target from 3,379,976 miles with my hi-res cam. Beautiful 17 miles per pixel resolution! #PlutoFlyby

— NASA New Horizons (@NASANewHorizons) July 10, 2015

After reaching its closest point to Pluto Tuesday morning, the spacecraft will gather data about the dwarf planet and its five known moons. Below is Charon, the largest of Pluto’s satellites.

More than 3.5 million miles away, New Horizons snaps this shot of Pluto, at right, and its moon Charon. Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI

You must check out this teaser for National Geographic’s documentary, “Mission Pluto.” It got me pretty pumped up for Tuesday.