Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when — thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto’s atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface — liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world. “In addition to this possible former lake, we also see evidence of channels that may also have carried liquids in Pluto’s past,” said Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado—principal investigator of New Horizons and lead author of the scientific paper.
This feature appears to be a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen, located in a mountain range just north of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum. Captured by the New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Pluto on 14 July 2015, the image shows details as small as about 430 feet (130 metres). At its widest point the possible lake appears to be about 20 miles (30 kilometres) across.
A team of scientists has documented atmospheric changes on Io, Jupiter’s volcanically active satellite, as the giant planet casts its shadow over the moon during daily eclipses. Io’s thin atmosphere collapses as the sulfur dioxide gas emitted from volcanoes freezes when shaded by Jupiter. The atmosphere reforms when Io moves out of eclipse and the ice sublimates.
The first images from the New Horizons spacecraft since late July will come back to Earth on 5 September, and scientists are salivating over what the new pictures will reveal about Pluto.
An international team using the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) at the Gemini South telescope in Chile has discovered a young, emerging planetary system around star HD 115600 that has remarkable similarities to our own Solar System in its infancy.
