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Astronomy Magazine »Historic Discovery! Gravitational Waves Breakthrough a Wrinkle in Space-Time Confirms Einstein’S Theory P SCIENCE MEET THE NEXT GENERATION UPDATE PLUTO p. 28 SPACE TELESCOPE p. 52 MAY 2016 The world’s best-selling astronomy magazine »Historic discovery! Gravitational waves breakthrough A wrinkle in space-time confirms Einstein’s theory p. 22 A simulation shows gravitational waves coming from two black holes as they PLUS spiral in together. What’s How to www.Astronomy.com blowing 35 view 10 BONUS Vol. 44 ONLINE • bubbles in favorite Mercury’s tempting Issue 5 the Milky double rare spring bino CONTENT CODE p. 4 Way? p. 44 stars p. 64 transit p. 62 targets p. 60 Worlds of wonder HOT RESULTS COOL PLANET New Horizons reveals Pluto as a world of stark beauty and complex geology that has been active for billions of years. by S. Alan Stern ast summer, NASA’s New that mapped the surfaces at both ultraviolet Horizons mission suc- and infrared wavelengths, and data on par- cessfully and spectac- ticles and plasma that has transformed our ularly completed the knowledge about Pluto and its five satellites. first exploration of the Chief among the findings so far: Pluto has Pluto system. In just a been active over its entire 4.5 billion-year matter of weeks, Pluto life; small planets can be just as complex as went from a point of larger worlds like Mars; Pluto’s big satellite, L light that could be studied Charon, is much more complex than anyone only from afar to a planet in all had anticipated; and Pluto’s four small its glory. And with this historic flyby, NASA moons display behaviors and attributes and the United States concluded the recon- unlike any other small satellite system pre- naissance of all the planets known at the viously visited. time the Space Age began. Now let’s take a detailed look at many of New Horizons collected a rich harvest the key discoveries that New Horizons made of color and panchromatic images, spectra about Pluto and its family of moons. 28 ASTRONOMY • MAY 2016 Pluto’s geologic diversity stands out in this enhanced color mosaic taken when New Horizons was near closest approach. Scientists often exaggerate an image’s color to highlight differences in composition and texture. ALL IMAGES: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Water ice forms the “bedrock” of Pluto, with more volatile ices made of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide coating the surface. This map traces the presence of water ice on the Pluto’s atmosphere glows a deep blue, rivaling the beauty of our planet’s blanket of air. This nightside surface, with gray having none, blue a little, view reveals dozens of haze layers that extend up to altitudes of more than 125 miles (200 kilometers). and green and yellow a lot. miles (160 million kilometers) away, shin- to study Pluto’s blanket of air. Although ing like a bright, highly reflective beacon scientists had discovered this feature from on Pluto’s surface. Close-up images later Earth in the late 1980s, New Horizons revealed that SP is a gigantic icy plain with upended many of our ideas. For example, a surface area of more than 350,000 square it found the upper atmosphere to be tens miles (900,000 square kilometers). Those of degrees colder than expected; prior to images also revealed SP to be almost per- the flyby, we thought it was warm enough fectly flat and ringed on all sides by moun- to drive a prodigious atmospheric escape tains jutting 2 to 3 miles (3 to 4km) above rate that rivaled those of comets. Instead, its floor. This indicates that the Texas-sized we uncovered a very Earth-like escape feature may well be a gigantic impact basin rate, about 100 to 1,000 times slower formed by an ancient collision between than predicted. Pluto and a large Kuiper Belt object perhaps And whereas Earth-based experiments 60 to 125 miles (100 to 200km) across. stretching over almost two decades had But there’s more to SP than its impact failed to find evidence for hazes and dis- The 90-mile-wide (150 kilometers) Wright Mons origin. The central and northern regions crete cloud layers in Pluto’s atmosphere, appears to be a shield volcano, like Hawaii’s of this expanse display a cellular pattern New Horizons found both. The team has Mauna Loa or Mars’ Olympus Mons, down to the deep central pit at its summit. Instead of lava, in the ices, with characteristic cell sizes of counted more than two dozen haze layers however, Wright Mons would erupt molten ice. 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100km). The cells are in New Horizons images that stretch up to All feature names used in this story are informal. bounded by shallow troughs up to 330 feet altitudes higher than 125 miles (200km) (100 meters) deep. The southern region above Pluto’s surface. These hazes likely and eastern margin of SP do not display form photochemically as ultraviolet light this cellular morphology. Instead, these interacts with the nitrogen, methane, and Pluto undoubtedly was the star of the show. areas appear to be featureless plains with carbon monoxide that dominate the atmo- It surprised us in more ways than I can myriad pits up to a few miles long that we sphere’s composition. These haze particles count, from its sheer physical beauty to its interpret to be the result of sublimation, ice grow to sizes of about 0.1 to 0.5 micron complex geology, atmosphere, and remark- turning directly into a gas. across and eventually silt out of the atmo- ably varied surface composition. Let me We have not found a single crater sphere onto the surface. Seen in color at summarize some of my personal favorites anywhere on SP down to the limit of our sunset, the haze scatters sunshine and cre- for the most important and surprising highest-resolution images, at 230 feet (70m) ates a blue tint that produces hauntingly things the team has discovered so far. And per pixel. Calculations show that this means beautiful images of blue skies on a faraway just as a note, all the feature names I men- the surface is less than 10 million years old. planet. And in a bonus for mapping pur- tion in this article are still informal ones We interpret this young age and the cellu- poses, we found the hazes cast sunlight given by the New Horizons team. lar nature of northern and central SP as hundreds of miles across onto Pluto’s Sputnik Planum — a geologically evidence for thermal convection in its deep active impact basin. We first spotted ices, but where the energy that drives this S. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Sputnik Planum (SP), which forms the heat flow arises remains unclear. Institute in Boulder, Colorado, is a planetary western half of Pluto’s heart-shaped Tom- A cold and hazy atmosphere. One scientist and the principal investigator on the baugh Regio, from more than 100 million of New Horizons’ major objectives was New Horizons mission. 30 ASTRONOMY • MAY 2016 The southern part of Sputnik Planum resolves into myriad pits in this high-resolution image taken when New Horizons was just 13 minutes from closest approach. Scientists think the pits arise as ice turns directly into gas. This high-resolution strip runs from the al-Idrisi Montes at top to the cen- ter of Sputnik Planum, showing the cellular The ancient, heavily cratered Cthulhu Regio at the bottom of this image appears to be more than structure in this part of 4 billion years old, yet it lies adjacent to the ice-rich plains of Sputnik Planum at top, which likely the Texas-sized glacier. is less than 10 million years old. As New Horizons swept by Pluto, it captured this view of the oddly textured mountains called Tartarus Dorsa along the day-night terminator. Scientists don’t know what causes the snakeskin-like terrain. still don’t know how a small planet like Pluto powers such activity over such an expanse of time. Tectonics, and volcanoes, too? The hemisphere New Horizons saw best at closest approach shows numerous exten- sional tectonic features — those that form as the surface spreads apart — in varying stages of degradation. Most dramatic is the Distinct layers show up in several of the craters 2- to 3-mile-deep (3 to 4km) V-shaped in this image, most noticeably the one above trough we call Virgil Fossa, which runs center. Typically, such layers indicate either a change in composition or the rate at which unbroken for more than 125 miles material was deposited, but scientists don’t (200km). Numerous other tectonic features know yet what caused these features on Pluto. testify to past geologic activity on Pluto. But even more dramatic and surprising was the discovery of two 95-mile-wide nightside, allowing us to use “hazeshine” (150km) mountains with deep central pits to map terrains we never thought we’d see at their summits. These features, called at close-approach resolution. Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, bear a Activity across billions of years. strong structural resemblance to shield Although SP has an estimated age of just volcanoes such as Mauna Loa and Mauna 10 million years (much less than 1 percent Kea on Hawaii. The lack of craters on their the age of the solar system), other regions flanks suggests they have been active in the on Pluto have strikingly different ages. past billion years. No such large volcano- West of southern SP lies Cthulhu, a region like features have been seen anywhere that is large, dark, and volatile-poor (mean- else in the solar system except among the ing it lacks substances that vaporize at rela- inner planets! tively low temperatures).
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