Mankind loved dwarf planet Pluto in the distance - a very long distance - since its discovery in 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. From where it is located in the cold outer borders of our solar system, this small, icy world has been the object of secrecy, passion and affection — perhaps simply because it is very far away. The Mysteries have a way of escaping the human imagination with pacifying relentlessness, and Pluto has remained fascinating, confusing mystery for almost a century. July 14, 2015, after spending nearly ten years on a dangerous and difficult journey through our solar system, the heroine of NASA New Horizons the spacecraft was able to make a historic visit to Pluto and its moons, and the beloved little world began to reveal the many fascinating secrets to the enthusiastic, curious eyes of astronomers. In January and February 2016, New Horizons Scientists have shown that Pluto has once again revealed some of its secrets - a world where nitrogen ice glaciers carry mysterious flying hills under a hazy atmosphere that appears blue when observed with infrared vision.
New Horizons completed its span of Pluto and its five moons and now continues its journey deeper and deeper into the region of our solar system, known as Kuiper belt. Kuiper Belt dark and cold, and it is here that the fascinating multitude of frozen ice objects — the nuclei of comets — pass around our Sun. Really, Kuiper Belt so far that our Star cannot light up and warm this frozen region so far from its fierce fires.
Kuiper Belt is located outside the orbit of a deep-sea well-known known planet, gaseous ice giant Neptune, which is the eighth planet of our sun. Pluto is a very big inhabitant of this region, where it dances around our Sun along with a huge amount of alien, sparkling, frozen worldlets ,
Pluto was assigned to a large planet shortly after its discovery. However, in subsequent years, astronomers' growing awareness that this mysterious, beloved little ice "oddity" is just one of several reliably large frozen spheres inhabiting Kuiper Belt caused International Astronomical Union (IAU), in 2006, to basically define what a “planet” is. This was condemned in poor Pluto, which was excluded from the pantheon of the major planets inhabiting our solar system. Now reclassified as simple dwarf planet , Pluto, however, continues to be a world of mysteries.
Sad Saga of the Little, Ice Worldlet
The Pluto saga began less than a century ago, when astronomer Clyde Tombo (1906–1997) first spotted him as a weak little light pin. Tombo was on the hunt for the elusive Planet X when he found Pluto instead. Planet X this is a hypothetical, hidden giant planet that may be hiding in cold blackness beyond the orbit of Neptune. This example of scientific serendipity happened when Tombaugh, the son of a young farmer from Kansas, searched for the outer edges of our solar system using a telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Like the others Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), Pluto consists of a mixture of ice and rock. It is also very tiny, being only 1/6 of the mass of the Earth and about 1/3 of its volume. Pluto also has a very prone and eccentric orbit, as it surrounds our Star from a distance of about 20 to 49 Astronomical units (AU) , One AU this is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is 93,000,000 miles. Pluto occasionally wanders closer to our Star than Neptune. However, both bodies are lucky, because orbital resonance with Neptune prevails over two physically crashing into each other.
Kuiper Belt is a very remote domain of our solar system, located outside the region of the giant gas planets inhabiting the outer solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. belt extends from the orbit of Neptune to about 50 AU The average distance of Neptune from our Sun is about 30.1 AU.
Pluto has a frozen ice moon quintet: Charon, Knicks, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. Charon today is the largest of this frigid party of distant satellites, the diameter of which is about 50% of the size of Pluto. Some astronomers believe that Pluto and Charon constitute a binary system, because the barycenter of their orbits is not in any of the small worlds. Charon was discovered in 1978 by American astronomer James Christie. This relatively large lunar world is often considered a terrible piece that took off from Pluto itself as a result of a catastrophic collision with another object that galloped through Kuiper Belt too close to pluto.
For most of the 20th century, astronomers mistakenly believed that poor little Pluto is a solitary body, where it twists our star in the dark, deeply freezes the most distant region of our Solar System - very far from the beautiful light and the comforting warmth of our Sun. However in 1992 KBO (except Pluto and Charon). This discovery showed that Pluto is very far from being alone, where it lives in Kuiper Belt Since 1992 many others CCD were found to have a ghostly resemblance to Pluto, and these kindred worlds also show eccentric orbits. The most important of these small bodies is scattered disk object named Eris which was discovered in 2005. Eris 27% more than Pluto. This led to the realization that Pluto is just one of many other CCD, and this new understanding was decided in its reclassification and downgrading main planet at dwarf planet. However, not all astronomers accept the low fall of Pluto, and they claim that Pluto should not have lost its original design like the ninth major planet of our Star - and that other relatives dwarf planets, which were recently discovered must also be assigned the status of a planet along with Pluto.
Launched on January 19, 2006, New Horizons in February 2007, he broke through the powerful gas giant Jupiter to get hit by gravity, as well as conduct a scientific study of this behemoth of the planet - certainly the largest in our solar system. As part of New Horizons expanded mission, it will penetrate deeper and deeper into the mysterious Kuiper Belt to make some revealing intimate and personal observations of one or two mysterious ice dwellers of this distant, dark and cold domain. Kuiper Belt is in fact a reminder of the ancient formation of our solar system about 4.56 billion years ago. His icy inhabitants left planetesmals- - which are the comet building blocks of the four planetary giants of the outer solar system.
Our inhabitants of the solar system were classified into three categories. The first category includes a quarter of the rocky, internal terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), while the second category includes four magnificent gas giants of the outer borders. Pluto and Charon are now recently classified as inhabitants of the third category of planetary objects, ice dwarfs , Ice dwarfs have hard surfaces but unlike the surfaces of four terrestrial rocky planets, strange surfaces of these frozen objects are mainly composed of ice material.
New Horizons promises to uncover an ancient, haunting and intriguing saga about the secret origin of the inhabitants of this most remote region. The plated spacecraft intends to explore - for the first time - how ice dwarfs how Pluto and Charon evolved over eons.
Hazy Blue Skies under observation with infrared eyes
January 29, 2016 image received from NASA New Horizons a spacecraft was released, which offered a first teasing look at Pluto's atmosphere in infrared wavelengths. This is the first image of the atmosphere, made with data obtained from New Horizons Ralph / Linear Etalon Spectral Array (LEISA) tool.
In the intriguing image you can see the sunlight coming from above and behind Pluto. The image was taken on July 14, 2015, while New Horizons was about 112,000 miles Image covers Leisa & # 39; s full spectrum (from 1.25 to 2.5 μm), which is divided by one third, with the shortest third placed in the blue channel, and the middle third in the green channel and the longest in the red channel.
Blue ring around charming ice dwarf is the result of the scattering of sunlight from haze particles that make up a heavy population in the atmosphere of Pluto. Astronomers believe that haze is truly a photochemical smog caused by exposure to sunlight on methane and other molecules. This action causes a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, such as ethylene and acetylene. These hydrocarbons accumulate to create tiny particles that are part of a micrometer in size, which then scatter sunlight to form a blue haze. A new infrared image, when used in combination with some previous images made at shorter, visible wavelengths, provides astronomers with a new understanding of the size distribution of these particles.
It is believed that the white spots that can be seen in the image around Pluto’s limb are due to the fact that sunlight transmits more reflective or smoother areas of Pluto’s frigid surface - with the largest white spot located in the western part unofficially dubbed Cthulhu regio The future Leisa Observations returned to Earth by scientists should show a reminder of the blue haze that is missing at the bottom of this image.
Mysterious rolling hills treated by nitrogen ice glaciers
In February 2016, New Horizons astronomers have announced their findings that the glacier glaciers on Pluto appear to carry with them a large number of isolated hills, which may be fragments of water ice occurring on the heights of Pluto. These hills are individually measured from one to several miles across, in accordance with data and images obtained from NASA New horizon Spacecraft
Strange hills that are located on an unspecified plain of ice, informally dubbed Sputnik planum , exist in a vast heart shape on the surface of Pluto. Hills of ice are probably miniature versions of the larger, mixed mountains observed on "Sputnik Planum" western border. These strange hills are another example of Pluto’s fascinating and active geological history.
Water ice is less dense than ice with a predominance of nitrogen. For this reason, astronomers have suggested that these mysterious hills of water ice float in a strange, alien sea of frozen nitrogen. Hills travel over time in much the same way as icebergs do in the cold Arctic seas of our own planet. Scientists believe that the hills are probably part of the strong elevations of Pluto, which have separated and are currently being transported by nitrogen glaciers to Satellite Planum. Indeed, “chains” of floating hills form along the flow paths of glaciers. When the hills enter the cellular terrain of the central Sputnik planum , they become susceptible to the convective movements of nitrogen ice and are forced to float to the edges of the cells. This is an area where hills are grouped into groups that extend up to 12 miles across.
A function that is informally called Challenger Calls - in honor of the crew of seven cosmonauts who died in the space shuttle challenger January 28, 1986 crash is on the northern edge of the image. Challenger Calls it seems to be a particularly large collection of these strange hills of water ice, measuring approximately 37 by 22 miles. This feature is located close to the border with the hills, which is far from the cellular landscape, and may represent a place where some of the hills were twisted, because the nitrogen ice is particularly shallow in this area.
In addition, the image also shows an inset in context next to a larger view, which shows most of Pluto's hemisphere. Image was taken from New Horizons Multispectral Visible Camera (MVIC) tool. Since north is up, there is light in the upper left corner of the image Image resolution is about 1050 feet per pixel, and the image is measured at just over 300 miles in length and approximately 210 miles in width. It was received at a distance of about 9,950 miles from Pluto - about 12 minutes before New Horizons The closest approach to Pluto is July 14, 2015.
