Until last year, there were no high-quality photographs of Pluto - dwarf planet made of ice and rock located in the Kuiper belt. Until 1992, it was considered the ninth planet in the solar system, but after several similar objects were discovered, Pluto was classified as a dwarf planet and largest object in the Kuiper belt. In this review interesting photos and facts about this planet.
Because Pluto was the most distant planet from Earth (it is between 4.3 and 7.5 billion km from Earth, depending on its current orbital position), it remains one of the least studied and understood objects in the solar system. In July 2015 New Horizons(New Horizons) became the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto, taking a lot of unique photographs during this time.
1. Pluto in high resolution
One of the last images of Pluto from high resolution. The photo was taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
2. Sunset 06/14/2015
Just 15 minutes after the craft made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, cameras spaceship“looked back” at the Sun. At the same time, we managed to take unique shots of the sunset over icy mountains and flat icy plains, extending to the horizon of Pluto.
3. Landforms
This photo illustrates the incredible diversity geological forms relief on the surface of a dwarf planet.
4. The atmosphere of a dwarf planet
Pluto's atmosphere glows against the background of the Sun, surrounding the dwarf planet. In this image taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 15, the atmosphere appears to be a halo.
5. Shadows of the Hills
The setting sun illuminates the fog or near-surface haze. At the same time, parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains are visible in the haze.
6. Charon
One of the clearest and most detailed images of Charon, Pluto's largest moon.
7. Pluto and Charon
Pluto and its satellite Charon. Photo taken by New Horizons in color and at the highest possible resolution.
8. Ice Mountain Range
New Horizons has discovered a new, apparently less sublime mountain range on the lower left edge of Pluto’s most famous “feature” - the ice mountains.
9. Nikta and Hydra
While Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is fairly well-known among astronomy enthusiasts, the dwarf planet's smaller and lesser-known moons are usually overlooked. Spacecraft New Horizons photographed 2 of these satellites - Nix and Hydra.
10. Dual system
New photo of Pluto and Charon. The dwarf planet and its satellite were sometimes even considered dual system, since the barycenter of their orbits is not located on any of these cosmic bodies.
11. “Heart” of the planet
The bright, mysterious “heart” of Pluto in close proximity. New Horizons took this image on July 12 from a distance of 2.5 million kilometers.
12. Carbon monoxide and crystalline nitrogen
In the western half of the planet, scientists have discovered what scientists have informally dubbed the "Heart of Pluto" due to the similarity of this bright area to the shape of a heart. New Horizons revealed that this bright spot is composed of frozen carbon monoxide and crystalline nitrogen.
13. Haze in the atmosphere
The bright haze in Pluto's atmosphere produces a soft twilight that illuminates the surface before sunrise and after sunset.
14. Satellite Nikta
Snapshot little satellite Pluto Nix close-up. The size of Nikta is only 54 × 41 × 36 kilometers.
15. Hydra satellite
Hydra, Pluto's outer moon, was discovered in 2005. The dimensions of the ice-covered satellite are 43 × 33 km.
And in continuation space theme we collected .
Although it has not yet been officially named.
The region was identified in the first detailed photographs of Pluto on July 15, 2015, sent by interplanetary station"New Horizons ". The region is informally called the Tombo region or Tombo region (lat. Tombaugh Regio) in honor of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto.
Detailed photographs of Pluto show that the halves of the “heart” are not identical, the left lobe, which contains Sputnik Planitia, is brighter. The left lobe is thought to be a crater filled with crystalline nitrogen. It is also possible that the highlight level is higher.
Thus, two mountain ranges were discovered in the region. The height of the first one located next to bottom“heart” and received the unofficial name of Mount Norgay - up to 3500 meters. The height of the second, unofficially named Mount Hillary and located near the southwestern edge of this area between the icy plains (Sputnik Plateau) and dark areas (the area marked impact craters) - up to 1500 meters.
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Excerpt characterizing the Heart of Pluto
Meanwhile, one has only to turn away from studying the reports and master plans, but delve into the movement of those hundreds of thousands of people who took direct, immediate participation in the event, and all the questions that previously seemed insoluble suddenly with extraordinary ease and simplicity receive an undoubted solution.The goal of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the imagination of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was meaningless and achieving it was impossible.
The people had one goal: to cleanse their land from invasion. This goal was achieved, firstly, by itself, since the French fled, and therefore it was only necessary not to stop this movement. Secondly, this goal was achieved by actions people's war, which destroyed the French, and, thirdly, the fact that a large Russian army followed the French, ready to use force if the French movement was stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip on a running animal. And an experienced driver knew that it was most beneficial to hold the whip raised, threatening it, and not to whip a running animal on the head.
When a person sees a dying animal, horror seizes him: what he himself is, his essence, is obviously destroyed in his eyes - ceases to exist. But when the dying person is a person, and the loved one is felt, then, in addition to the horror of the destruction of life, one feels a gap and a spiritual wound, which, just like a physical wound, sometimes kills, sometimes heals, but always hurts and is afraid of an external irritating touch.
After the death of Prince Andrei, Natasha and Princess Marya felt this equally. They, bent morally and closing their eyes from the menacing cloud of death hanging over them, did not dare to look life in the face. They carefully protected their open wounds from offensive, painful touches. Everything: a carriage driving quickly down the street, a reminder about lunch, a girl’s question about a dress that needs to be prepared; even worse, the word of insincere, weak sympathy painfully irritated the wound, seemed like an insult and violated that necessary silence in which they both tried to listen to the terrible, strict chorus that had not yet ceased in their imagination, and prevented them from peering into those mysterious endless distances that opened for a moment In front of them.
Just the two of them, it wasn't offensive or painful. They spoke little to each other. If they talked, it was about the most insignificant subjects. Both of them equally avoided mentioning anything related to the future.
To admit the possibility of a future seemed to them an insult to his memory. They were even more careful to avoid in their conversations everything that could be related to the deceased. It seemed to them that what they experienced and felt could not be expressed in words. It seemed to them that any mention in words of the details of his life violated the greatness and sacredness of the sacrament that had taken place in their eyes.
The new discovery raises questions about whether Pluto actually has an underground ocean.
Two weeks after mission scientists NASA's New Horizons published a study showing the planet has an underground ocean, another team has put forward an alternative explanation for how the distinctive heart-shaped pool formed.
A new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests that the formation of the basin began not from the impact of a comet or other impacting body, but from a mass of ice collected on the surface. This explanation does not require an ocean.
“This is a path without an ocean that explains the features of Sputnik Planitia,” University of Maryland astronomer Douglas Hamilton wrote in an email.
“Although Pluto does not require an internal ocean, there is nothing in my study that argues against its presence,” he added.
Computer modeling suggests that Pluto's ice resembles the Greenland Ice Sheet and could single-handedly form a basin by pressing on the underlying crust.
“The idea that the pool was created from a mass of ice came at the end creative process" said Hamilton. – “Initially, I focused on explaining the location of the ice caps ( ice Sputnik Planitia) on the surface of the planet. This feature focuses on 25 northern latitude and 175 longitude, almost opposite the giant moon Charon."
“In coming up with a viable scenario to explain these observations, I realized that the impact idea limits successful models to small groups of impact sites. Although there is a more reliable option that could explain the location of the ice caps under any initial conditions,” he wrote.
“My model doesn't rely on impacts. But it still needs to be explained why this ice is found in a deep basin. I believe it was simply due to the sheer weight of the massive ice cap - the planet's crust buckling slightly under the weight, just as happened in Greenland, Canada and Scandinavia during the last ice age. This is a natural explanation for the coincidence in the location of the ice cap and the basin,” Hamilton said.
The new study suggests that the ice sheet formed early, when rotation was fast, and the basin itself appeared later. The ice cap creates a slight asymmetry that rotates toward or away from Charon as the planet's rotation slows to match orbital motion.
The unusual location of the ice is associated with the climate and the axis of rotation of the planet, bent by 120 degrees (at Earth - by 23.5 degrees). This was written about in a press release from the University of Maryland.
“Modeling the temperatures of the dwarf planet showed (taking averages over Pluto’s 248-year orbit) that places 30 degrees to the northern and southern latitudes are the coldest locations. Their temperature is lower than at any pole. Ice would have formed in these areas naturally. This also applies to the Sputnik Planitia center,” the press release says.
Over time, the ice deposit attracts more ice cover, reflecting the sun's light and heat. This saves low temperatures(“runaway albedo effect”).
Since the pool is larger than the volume of ice filling it, scientists believe that Sputnik Planitia for a long time lost weight.
Pluto is only the third object in the solar system, along with Earth and Mars, that can boast ice caps.
The Tombo region, also known as the "heart of Pluto", is home to Sputnik Plain
Sputnik Planitia appeared due to a combination of atmospheric processes on Pluto with its topographical features, scientists report in an article published in the journal Nature. In addition, researchers believe that methane ice deposits in the middle and high latitudes northern hemisphere dwarf planets are expected to disappear in the next decade.
Last year, the New Horizons probe discovered an unusual relief feature on Pluto. His camera captured images of a plateau that was significantly lighter than the surrounding area. The area located in the “heart of Pluto” was called “Sputnik Planitia.” Research has shown that it is covered in ice, a mixture of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, and formed over the last 100 million years. The plain has complex structure- its surface is divided into “cells” with a width of 20 to 30 kilometers, which are the result of convection. It also revealed ice hills drifting on frozen nitrogen, which are fragments of hills located at the edges of the “heart of Pluto.”
Scientists still did not know what exactly led to the formation of the Sputnik Plain. To find out, they created computer simulation distribution of matter on the surface of Pluto over the past 50 thousand years (during this time it would have made 200 revolutions around the Sun). The researchers assumed that the dwarf planet was entirely covered with a small layer of ice, and its atmosphere contained gaseous nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. When creating the model, the authors of the work took into account many parameters, such as the inclination of the planetoid’s rotation axis, seasonal thermal inertia and albedo.
The simulation showed that if Pluto's surface were smooth, it would have to have either a permanent streak nitrogen ice at the equator, or seasonal snow caps at the poles. These results were not consistent with observational data. Then the researchers added a realistic relief by placing three large craters, one of which is supposedly located under the Sputnik Plain and has a depth of four kilometers. In that case, thanks high blood pressure, and, as a result, more high temperature condensation, nitrogen, most of the methane and carbon monoxide began to accumulate in the lowlands.
Ice distribution on the surface of Pluto. The dwarf planet was originally covered in ice made of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Over time, ice consisting only of methane begins to predominate on the planet, and by 2030 all the ice is concentrated only in the Sputnik Plain region.
Tanguy Bertrand and François Forget / Nature, 2016
From computer model It also follows that as Pluto moves away from the Sun, the average pressure on the dwarf planet will fall. According to the authors of the work, this will lead to the fact that methane ice in the northern hemisphere of the planetoid will disappear by 2030. If observations confirm this hypothesis, then the authors’ model can be considered reliable.
The New Horizons spacecraft, which transmitted photographs of the Sputnik plain, was launched in 2006 by the NASA aerospace agency. Its mission is to study the formation of the Pluto-Charon system, as well as other moons and Kuiper Belt objects. Closest approach probe with Pluto occurred in July 2015; New Horizons is now at a distance of 3.5 astronomical units from the dwarf planet and is moving towards the asteroid 2014 MU 69.
In the solar system, disastrous events do not usually result in the destruction of worlds. A planet or moon can be hit by an asteroid or comet, and, having strayed from the previous trajectory, hesitate for some time and change the tilt of its axis, experiencing a change in the landscape. But everything will eventually stabilize.
It is precisely these titanic changes that are now taking place on Pluto, and the main reason for them is the famous heart on its surface. The dwarf planet's orientation in space is under control heavy ice at its heart, as well as the massive global sea that astronomers believe lies beneath it.
When New Horizons captured detailed images of Pluto last year, small world- originally the ninth planet, which was demoted to dwarf status a decade ago - appeared before us as stone ball, wrapped in a shell of sand-colored ice and surrounded nitrogen atmosphere. Astronomers believe that between the rocky bottom and the icy crust there is an ocean of water that washes wrinkled mountains sprinkled with methane snow. Most of The surface of the dwarf planet looks like snake skin, covered with ripples of gray and red-brown folds and pits. However distinctive feature Pluto has a huge heart called the Tombaugh Region. His left side- a 1000 km wide basin called Sputnik Planitia. Many astronomers think that this teardrop-shaped spot is a scar left by a giant cosmic body, which collided with Pluto thousands of years ago.
Pluto and its moon, Charon, always face the same way towards each other - just like our Moon faces the Earth. The bright Tombaugh Region always faces away from Charon. The alignment is so precise that it appears as if Charon is floating over the area that is directly opposite Satellite Planitia. This suggests that there is additional mass in this area that causes Pluto to rotate to maintain balance between its mass and its sister Moon. Astronomers have figured out how such a reorganization occurred; several publications published yesterday in the journal Nature are devoted to this.
« The problem is that Sputnik Planitia is a hole in the surface, and accordingly there should be less mass there than everywhere else, not more" - says Francis Nimmo, planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz - " if this is true, then we will have to figure out a way to find the hidden mass«.
This mass could be in the form of a dirty part of the ocean, Nimmo says. When the huge body hit Pluto, it opened up part of the planet's ice sheet. The ocean below the surface rose up to fill the void. The density of water is higher than the density of ice, so Pluto's mass then began to be distributed unevenly. After this, the entire planet turned out to be unbalanced, seeming to become heavier on one side (we know that something similar happened to our Moon). Over time, this will reorient Pluto's rotation until it balances itself again. This would be what brought Satellite Planitia to its current location, directly opposite Charon.
According to Nimmo's co-author, MIT planetary scientist Richard Binzel, the temperatures and pressures inside Pluto suggest the existence of a viscous, dirty ocean. This body of water may also contain ammonium, a known antifreeze. Pluto is 40 times farther from the sun than Earth, but it can warm itself with radioactive elements in its round core. This internal reactor will heat the reservoir for another billion years or so. Charon may also have had his own water ocean, but it was so small, and the radiation of radioactive elements was so weak, that it should have frozen two billion years ago.
Research shows that many others distant worlds The Kuiper Belt may also have internal oceans of water and other liquids.
Ice and the movement of that ice across the planet's surface controls almost all of the geology we see.
"The only place where you won't find a lot of water is inner part solar system“- says Nimmo, “the outer part is quite rich in it.”
Above this dirty sea Pluto's frozen heart is filled with nitrogen snow, which may also have played a role in changing the dwarf planet's orientation in the millennia after the collision. Pluto lies on its side, so the poles get more sunlight than the equator. Since the planet moves slowly around the sun - one revolution takes 248 earthly years- Nitrogen and other gases freeze in permanently darkened areas, and then return to gaseous form and then become solid again. This nitrogen snow can accumulate over billions of years, and eventually the heavy nitrogen glacier in the Sputnik Planitia region could change the shape of the planet, says James Keene, a scientist at the University of Arizona.
Is it through fault? groundwater or snow on the surface, the result is the same: Pluto reorients.
This phenomenon is called true polar wander, and is common on rocky worlds: scientists have studied it on Earth, the moon and Mars. True polar wander is different from the 23 degrees tilt on Earth's axis that gives our planet its seasons. When this phenomenon occurs, the planet's axis of rotation does not tilt; instead, its crust shifts. It's as if the Earth's tilt remained the same, but the continents slid so that New York would move towards North Pole. You can also draw an analogy with a peach in your hand, when you peel its skin, but do not touch the pulp.
A true polar wander occurs when something very catastrophic happens, causing changes in the distribution of the planet's mass. In a rotating world, extra mass moves towards the equator, and zones with less mass move towards the poles. This happened on the Moon when lava erupted billions of years ago, forming characteristic appearance our companion. On Mars, a similar process occurred when Mount Tharsis, which erupted lava between 4.1 and 3.7 billion years ago, deformed the planet.
Pluto's polar wander began with the influence of Sputnik Planitia and is still happening today, according to Keene, who also studied the dwarf planet's cracked, fractured surface. The pattern of damage matches what would be seen during a true polar wander, he says. The faults also support the idea of a sea beneath the surface.
The reorientation shows that the long-term seasonal migration of ice is, in a sense, weather- dictate the fate of Pluto.
“Ice and the movement of that ice across the surface controls almost all of the geology that we see,” Keene says. This interaction between climate and orbital evolution may occur in other ice worlds, the scientist believes.
New Horizons is now far from Pluto and is moving towards its next target - 2014 MU69, preparing to arrive on January 1, 2019. Last month, scientists received the latest Pluto transmission, which contains more than 50 gigabits of data. They will study it for years to come, but some are already dreaming about what we could do next. If people could ever send a probe there, they could equip it with a radar instrument that would allow them to look under Pluto's crust and into its ocean.
In the distant future, we may be able to send an orbiter or even a pair into orbit around Pluto. Such a device will be able to study the layers of nitrogen ice on Sputnik Planitia and the ice that forms the crust. It will be possible to observe the dwarf planet's seasons slowly changing. It will be possible to see what is actually hidden under the ice and how, over the course of millennia, a world thrown to the edge of the solar system can change itself.
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