A View From Pluto

Digital work

Charon in the sky, behind a thin bluish haze, as seen from a reddish tholin plain of Pluto. Some areas are covered by glaciers of nitrogen and methane ice and the distant hills are made of water ice.



Una vista de Plutón. Obra digital

Caronte en el cielo, tras una delgada neblina azulada, visto desde una rojiza llanura de tolinas de Plutón. Algunas áreas aparecen cubiertas por glaciares de hielo de metano y nitrógeno y las colinas distantes son de hielo de agua.

Charon from Pluto

Digital work

In 1988 the atmosphere of Pluto was detected for the first time during a stellar occultation. New Horizons spacecraft arrived at Pluto in July 2015. It found a surprisingly robust hazy atmosphere on the dwarf planet. The haze extends at least 160 kilometers (100 miles) above the surface. Clouds, haze, winds, micro snowflakes,... could all be part of Pluto's dynamic weather system. Clouds and haze must be made of the very constituents of its atmosphere: molecular nitrogen and some carbon monoxide and methane. The presence of clouds, however, is dependent on the existence of a temperature gradient, like that on Earth. And with clouds must come some form of rain or, at Pluto's distance from the Sun, snow. It is thought that clouds in Pluto's atmosphere may be composed of tiny frozen spherules of nitrogen or carbon monoxide, rather than liquid or snowflakes.
Charon, the faithful companion, is seen in Pluto's sky with a size of 3º, six times our Moon from Earth.

The frozen plains of Pluto

Digital work

Although the apparent size of the Sun is 30 times smaller than seen from Earth, from Pluto our star is still very bright, giving roughly 150 to 450 times the light of the full Moon on Earth (the variability being due to the fact that Pluto's orbit is highly elliptical). So it is still possible to read a book on Pluto. Pluto's atmosphere consists of a thin envelope of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide gases, which are derived from the ices of these substances on its surface, This atmosphere produces a noticeable blue haze which is visible at sunset.