ilan
06-02-2018, 12:17 PM
How did Pluto form its mysterious dunes?
Jake Parks, Astronomy | Published: Friday, June 1, 2018
Despite its puny atmosphere, Pluto still musters enough wind to create dunes like those found on Earth. Of course, the dunes are made of methane, not sand.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2018/06/171537_web.jpg?mw=500&mh=400
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) per hour in July 2015, it captured a plethora of breathtaking photos of the distant dwarf planet’s surface. Within these highly detailed images, researchers noticed what looked to be an extensive system of strange dunes stretching 75 miles along the boundary of Pluto’s massive Al-Idrisi Montes mountain range and Sputnik Planitia – a nitrogen-ice plain that forms the left lobe of the planet’s famous “heart.”
“We knew that every solar system body with an atmosphere and a solid rocky surface has dunes on it, but we didn’t know what we’d find on Pluto,” said Matt Telfer, lead author of a new study that reveals the origins of Pluto’s mysterious dunes, in a press release. “It turns out that even though there is so little atmosphere, and the surface temperature is around –230 degrees Celsius [–382 degrees Fahrenheit], we still get dunes forming.”
According to the study, published May 31 in the journal Science, despite the vast differences between Pluto and Earth, the two worlds apparently form dunes in a very similar way. Specifically, Pluto’s atmosphere captures small particles of methane (instead of sand) from the base of a nearby mountain range before relatively strong winds carry the particles away. These particles eventually settle with a little help from gravity, ultimately forming wind-swept dunes comparable to those found on Earth.
Jake Parks, Astronomy | Published: Friday, June 1, 2018
Despite its puny atmosphere, Pluto still musters enough wind to create dunes like those found on Earth. Of course, the dunes are made of methane, not sand.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2018/06/171537_web.jpg?mw=500&mh=400
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) per hour in July 2015, it captured a plethora of breathtaking photos of the distant dwarf planet’s surface. Within these highly detailed images, researchers noticed what looked to be an extensive system of strange dunes stretching 75 miles along the boundary of Pluto’s massive Al-Idrisi Montes mountain range and Sputnik Planitia – a nitrogen-ice plain that forms the left lobe of the planet’s famous “heart.”
“We knew that every solar system body with an atmosphere and a solid rocky surface has dunes on it, but we didn’t know what we’d find on Pluto,” said Matt Telfer, lead author of a new study that reveals the origins of Pluto’s mysterious dunes, in a press release. “It turns out that even though there is so little atmosphere, and the surface temperature is around –230 degrees Celsius [–382 degrees Fahrenheit], we still get dunes forming.”
According to the study, published May 31 in the journal Science, despite the vast differences between Pluto and Earth, the two worlds apparently form dunes in a very similar way. Specifically, Pluto’s atmosphere captures small particles of methane (instead of sand) from the base of a nearby mountain range before relatively strong winds carry the particles away. These particles eventually settle with a little help from gravity, ultimately forming wind-swept dunes comparable to those found on Earth.