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-------------------- - 1857 - Pluto - and its 5 satellites.
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- New Horizon spacecraft visits Pluto and writes a whole new story for the Dwarf Planet. The spacecraft was a fly-by so the images and data collected lasted only a few days. But, it will take several months to download all this data back to Earth.
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- To begin with Pluto is a system of orbiting moons in a strange dance of synchronous orbits:
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------------------------------------------------------------------ Orbit -------- Orbit
-------------------------- Diameter ---- Rotation ------- Radius -------- Period
-------------------------- ( miles ) ----- ( days ) --------- ( miles ) -------- ( days )
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------------ Pluto ------ 1475 ---------- 6.39 -----
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------------ Charon --- 754 ---------- 6.39 ------------- 12,161 ------- 6.39
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------------- Styx --------- 6 x 3.3 ----- 3.24 ------------- 26,505 ------- 20.16
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------------- Nix ----- 34x25x22 ----- 1.83 ------------- 30,257 ------- 24.85
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------------- Kerberos --- 7x5 -------- 5.33 ------------- 35,905 ------- 32.17
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------------- Hydra ----- 27x21 ------- 0.43 ------------- 40,226 ------- 38.20
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- Pluto is an icy cold world, but much more. There is a gigantic icy plain more than 350,000 square miles that is almost perfectly flat and ringed by mountains 2 to 3 miles high. It could be a giant impact basin formed by an ancient collision.
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- Other areas have a cellular pattern of ices with cell sizes 30 to 60 miles diameter and troughs 330 feet deep.
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- The plains have surfaces that are less than 10 million years old. This indicates thermal convection of Pluto’s deep ices. But, what is the energy source that creates this thermal convection?
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- Pluto’s atmosphere has over 2 dozen haze layers stretching up to 125 miles high. These hazes are photo chemical creations from ultraviolet light interacting with Nitrogen, Methane, and Carbon Monoxide found in the atmosphere. The haze particles are 0.1 to 0.5 microns in diameter.
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- The haze scatters sunshine and creates a blue tint not unlike the blue sky we are familiar with.
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- Some regions of Pluto are heavily cratered and are ancient terrains dating back 4 billion years. ( The Earth is 4.6 billion years old ). Other regions are just 1 billion years old which indicates the planet has been geologically active. But, how does such a small planet power such activity?
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- There is a surface crack that is a V-shaped trough 2 to 3 miles deep and 125 miles long. There are two 95 mile wide mountains with deep central pits at their summits like volcanoes.
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- Pluto’s crust is made of water ice. Up to 33% of the planet’s mass is water, H2O.
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- The next discoveries involved the five moons orbiting Pluto. The largest being Charon that is in synchronous orbit with its rotation similar to our Moon and Earth. ( i.e. We always see the same side of the Moon).
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- Charon is 754 miles diameter half the diameter of Pluto. There is no evidence of an atmosphere. Charon has heavily cratered terrain as well as ice-flooded terrains. It has an equatorial tectonic belt that would dwarf the Grand Canyon by comparison.
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- The theory is that Charon had a subsurface ocean of water that froze expanding the surface creating the surface faults. Most all these features are dated to be 4 billion years old.
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- There were deposits of ammonia and ammonium hydrates scattered across the water ice surface. This chemistry was not found on Pluto. Stay tuned , there is still more data being downloaded. It will keep us busy for years learning more about the Dwarf Planet at the edge of our Solar System.
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- Request these Reviews to learn more:
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- #1789 - Pluto 9th planet demoted to 1st dwarf planet.
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- #1781 - Learn more about Pluto.
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- #1724 - Visiting Pluto
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- #1632 - Pluto and the Kuiper Belt Dwarf Planets.
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- #1727 - Pluto and Charon, do the math
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Friday, April 22, 2016 -----
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