Posted on 09/18/2015 3:40:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: This shadowy landscape of majestic mountains and icy plains stretches toward the horizon of a small, distant world. It was captured from a range of about 18,000 kilometers when New Horizons looked back toward Pluto, 15 minutes after the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14. The dramatic, low-angle, near-twilight scene follows rugged mountains still popularly known as Norgay Montes from foreground left, and Hillary Montes along the horizon, giving way to smooth Sputnik Planum at right. Layers of Pluto's tenuous atmosphere are also revealed in the backlit view. With a strangely familiar appearance, the frigid terrain likely includes ices of nitrogen and carbon monoxide with water-ice mountains rising up to 3,500 meters (11,000 feet). That's comparable in height to the majestic mountains of planet Earth. This Plutonian landscape is 380 kilometers (230 miles) across.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute]
Just wow.
[and Hillary Montes along the horizon]
My stars, is there not even a dwarf planet this woman won’t corrupt?
Are the arc lines above the planetoid an atmosphere?
I believe when you combine Hillary with mountains you speak of Sir Edmund
The beekeeper who Hilary! was named after, LOL.
Incredible.
Yup. A very thin atmosphere. I heard it may be nitrogen which occasionally may rain out in the form of liquid nitrogen with rivers of nitrogen on the surface.
All I can say is if we ever go there, bring a sweater.
If only Edgar Allan Poe were still alive to see what Plutonian shores really look like.
If only Edgar Allan Poe were still alive to see what Plutonian shores really look like.
Now that is science at work as compared to the stuff they are trying to label as science like writing simple websites and apps.
;’)
Definitely. And there’s an article around here somewhere regarding how we’ve only rec’d 5 percent of the data so far, because of the distance and the required bandwidth. If so, it’ll take a year or more.
;)
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