Scientists Use Occultation Event To Confirm Decrease in Pluto’s Atmospheric Density
When Pluto passed in front of a star on the night of August 15, 2018, a Southwest Research Institute-led team of astronomers had deployed telescopes…
When Pluto passed in front of a star on the night of August 15, 2018, a Southwest Research Institute-led team of astronomers had deployed telescopes…
In 2015, the New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had…
Like Earth, the dwarf planet of Pluto has mountains. Like their earthly cousins, some of those peaks are covered in blankets of white. But the…
The mountains discovered on Pluto during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015 are covered by a blanket of methane ice,…
Evidence Supports ‘Hot Start’ Scenario and Early Ocean Formation on Pluto A new study suggests that Pluto and other large Kuiper belt objects started out…
When the New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto in 2015, one of the many fascinating features its images revealed was that this small, frigid world…
A “beating heart” of frozen nitrogen controls Pluto’s winds and may give rise to features on its surface, according to new research. Pluto’s renowned heart-shaped…
Computer simulations provide compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto’s icy exterior, according to…
The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research from the University of Central Florida. In 2006, the International Astronomical…
Before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through the Pluto system in July 2015, many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world….
Newly discovered dunes on Pluto tell us the dwarf planet’s geology and atmosphere is far more dynamic than previously expected, with the winds of its…
Dunes are known to form on Earth, Mars, Venus, Titan, and Comet 67P – and now on the dwarf planet Pluto, according to a new…
Legendary explorers and visionaries, real and fictitious, are among those immortalized by the IAU in the first set of official surface-feature names for Pluto’s largest…
Heat generated by the gravitational pull of moons formed from massive collisions could extend the lifetimes of liquid water oceans beneath the surface of large…
Observations from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft show that Pluto is much colder than predicted, suggesting that atmospheric haze works as a novel cooling mechanism. The…
New research reveals that the strange formations on Pluto’s surface are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of…
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has officially named 14 Pluto surface features and many more will soon be proposed to the IAU, both on Pluto…
Using data from New Horizons and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, NASA scientists have created two flyover movies that offer…