Looks almost like dunes, but it can’t be because lack of atmosphere/moisture....
Volcanic or seismic related features I guess.
Looks almost like dunes, but it can’t be because lack of atmosphere/moisture.... Volcanic or seismic related features I guess.New Pluto Images Show Possible Dunes, Crepuscular Rays, Unimaginable Complexity
universetoday.com ^ | on September 10, 2015 | Nancy Atkinson
“Seeing dunes on Pluto — if that is what they are — would be completely wild, because Pluto’s atmosphere today is so thin,” said William B. McKinnon, a GGI deputy lead from Washington University, St. Louis. “Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven’t figured out is at work. It’s a head-scratcher.”
Plus, a new view of Pluto’s hazy backlit atmosphere shows what are likely crepuscular rays — shadows cast on the haze by topography such as mountain ranges on Pluto, similar to the rays sometimes seen in the sky after the sun sets behind mountains on Earth.
Scientists say these new images reveal that Pluto’s global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized, and that the haze actually creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, making them visible to the cameras aboard New Horizons.
“This bonus twilight view is a wonderful gift that Pluto has handed to us,” said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from SwRI. “Now we can study geology in terrain that we never expected to see.”
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Sand Dune FormationA sand dune needs the following three things to form:
A large amount of loose sand in an area with little vegetation — usually on the coast or in a dried-up river, lake or sea bed
A wind or breeze to move the grains of sand
An obstacle that causes the sand to lose momentum and settle. This obstacle could be as small as a rock or as big as a tree.
Where these three variables merge, a sand dune forms. As the wind picks up the sand, the sand travels, but generally only about an inch or two above the ground. Wind moves sand in one of three ways:
Saltation: The sand grains bounce along in the wind. About 95 percent of sand grains move in this manner.
Creep: When sand grains collide with other grains — like clay or gravel — causing them to move. Creep accounts for about 4 percent of sand movement.
Suspension: Sand grains blow high in the air and then settle. About 1 percent of sand moves this way.
http://geography.howstuffworks.com/terms-and-associations/sand-dune1.htm
Looks almost like dunes, but it can’t be because lack of atmosphere/moisture.... Volcanic or seismic related features I guess. Like with many planets, moons, and large asteroids, covered with craters, the surface likely has a lot of loose material on it (sand, etc) from it being pulverized by impacts. A top surface layer of loose, unconsolidated material is known as regolith:
But, assuming for the time that it is sand, what caused the apparent "ripples" in it on Pluto?
