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.
Telescopes in Hawaii have obtained new images of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot, which will assist the first-ever close-up study of the Great Red Spot, planned for July 10.
The true size of Pluto has been debated since its discovery over 85 years ago. New Horizons’ mission scientists can now answer that question with certainty, confirming that Pluto is larger than all other known Solar System objects beyond the orbit of Neptune.
A crescent Pluto stars in pictures captured just after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s July flyby of the distant dwarf planet, exposing eerie backlit fog banks and glacial flows that scientists say hint at an Earth-like weather cycle.
