Awesome Blue Skies and Red Surface Ice Found at Pluto – The Other Red Planet

(Before It's News)

Pluto’s Blue Sky: Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Much to the amazement and delight of scientists, the latest findings about Pluto reveal it possesses hazy blue skies and numerous red colored patches of water ice exposed on the surface of a world also now known as “The Other Red Planet.”

With each passing day, significant discoveries about Pluto continue piling up higher and higher as more and more data gathered and stored from this past summer’s historic flyby by NASA’s New Horizons reaches ground stations back here on Earth. (…)
Read the rest of Awesome Blue Skies and Red Surface Ice Found at Pluto – The Other Red Planet (674 words)

© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Alan Stern, Charon, kuiper belt, NASA, New Horizons, other Red Planet, Pluto, tholins

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

• New World’s Conference Starts Oct. 16
• NASA gives one-day notice of “world killer” asteroid flyby this weekend
• Mystery Planet X or Rogue Planet and Rare Meteors Captured
• NASA Finds Blue Skies and Red Water Ice on Pluto (Photos)
• John Lenard Walson Latest Video – the Moon in Close-up
• Apollo photos redux
• NASA Webb Telescope Construction Leaps Forward with Delivery of Mirror Holding Backbone Flight Structure
• A Mission to a Metal World: The Psyche Mission
• NASA: Blue Skies On Pluto, Its Atmosphere is BLUE!!! Just Like Earth’s / Just Released! (+Video)
• Solar Impact / Earth – Video