What Did NASA Discover in Latest Photos from Pluto?

on the periphery of the solar system there is a small world Bound by toxic eyes that lurk in the middle of the great abyss of space a Giant Shadow that covers the stars of sight is immovable on its rugged horizon and the dim sun slowly crosses the sky the rays of the sun here are unable to dispel the gloom of the plain Frost wrinkled with bottomless cracks is perpetually shrouded in this is Pluto a lifeless Realm of rock and dice covered in perpetual shadow let's find out more Pluto is about 40 astronomical units from the Sun and is a dark and indistinguishable object this distant celestial body follows a rather elongated orbit around the center of the solar system completing it every 248 Earth years we know that the radius of Pluto is 1188 kilometers which means that it is markedly inferior in size not only to all the planets of the solar system, but also to some of its satellites, including the Moon, at the same time, observations of the proper motion of the celestial body made it possible to calculate its mass with a high degree of accuracy turned out to be small only 1.3 times 10 to the power of 22 kilograms or 18 of the lunar mass it is easy to see that Pluto is much more similar to small celestial bodies like aerys ceres or sadna in terms of its characteristics that is why it topped the list of dwarf planets in 2006. due to its long and long trajectory Pluto has a long orbital cycle only in 1989 the planetoid passed the perihelion of its orbit for the first time since its

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y approaching the Sun as close as 29.7 astronomical units since then this distance has been continuously increasing and will reach its greatest value in the year 2113. by that time, the dwarf planets will be close to their aphelion, which is 49.3 astronomical units from the center of our system, so Pluto is a very distant and dim space object, so it cannot be seen From Earth with the naked eye and even in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the dwarf planet looks like a cloudy brown disk without any detail on the surface, of course, in such conditions, it is almost impossible to study the celestial body correctly in order to solve this problem.

The unmanned New Horizons orbital station was sent to Pluto in 2006. It took nine and a half years to reach its destination on its way sent us detailed images of Jupiter. It wasn't until 2015 that the spacecraft finally reached the main object of its While was flying over Pluto, the station made about 400 observations collecting more than six gigabytes of information and it took more than a year to transmit this large amount of data to Earth, unfortunately the probe's trajectory did not allow the entire surface of the dwarf planet to be photographed. the fact is that New Horizons did not enter an orbit around Pluto but circled around Pluto in order to explore other space objects before moving on to celestial bodies terrain features we need to understand its internal structure according to the currently accepted Pluto model it has a massive core with a diameter of about 1,700 kilometers consisting of a mixture of various forms of water ice and rocks at its center is surrounded by a 300-kilometre ice sheet there are probably tectonic processes in the mantle and at the time In that It is quite little studied, the mantle, in turn, is covered by a crust that is a mixture of crystallized gases such as nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide.

According to some assumptions, Pluto's core can generate enough heat to melt part of the icy mantle, in this case in the depths. the surface of the planetoid there should hide a very salty and toxic ocean containing large amounts of dissolved ammonia since the surface temperature of the dwarf planet is very low and does not exceed 60 Kelvin or 213 degrees Celsius below zero our trip around Pluto will begin at the most prominent and well-studied feature of its relief Tombow Reggio this vast area is located in the equatorial zone of the planetoid and is in the form of a hard outline this resemblance earned the region its informal nickname the heart its size reaches up to 2,300 kilometers which means that the plane occupies about a quarter of the total area of ​​the celestial body tombow the surface of reggio is not homogeneous so there is a smooth and light plane in its western part known as Sputnik planisha whose diameter measures 1492 kilometers a The elevation map will reveal that this region is a vast area of ​​lowlands covered with a thick layer of nitrogen ice, as well as solid carbon monoxide and methane, these substances have a light coloration that makes some parts of the plane reflect up to the 90 percent with the light that falls on them. there are no craters, which means that the region is very young in geological terms according to the main hypothesis Sputnik lenisha was formed about a hundred million years ago when Pluto experienced a collision with a large celestial body, resulting in a huge impact crater that was filled with contents of the hypothetical interior ocean of the dwarf planet that quickly froze there, some typical features of the plane's relief can serve as evidence of this, for example, there are a large number of smooth surface areas ranging from 20 to 30 kilometers across. size with hills and depressions concentrated on the edges between them this type of structure resembles the convective cells that appear in any heated fluid From below this can serve as an indirect confirmation of the hypothesis of the warm interior tomb of Pluto Reggio is surrounded by comparatively high mountain ranges, thus Hillary Monty's west of sputnikplanetia reaches three and a half kilometers in height townsing mountains are located in the southern part of the heart, some of them reach a height of more than four kilometers above the average level from the dwarf planet's surface, making this ridge the highest found on Pluto, surprisingly, these rocks are probably composed mostly of water ice, and at temperatures as low as here on Pluto, water ice is solid As a rock moves a little further south we can see a deep basin surrounded by huge motorized layered ice ridges and rock is assumed to be the vent of an ancient cryovolcano and the rock surrounding it is its many frozen eruptions Its chemical composition is of great interest to science because once the peculiarities of Pluto's internal composition are known, it will be possible to study the eastern part of Tombau Reggio, which is darker, and its surface is marked with a large number of craters. , which means that this region is much older than the Sputnik planisha moving further east along the equator, we will see a chain of dark spots hundreds of kilometers in diameter.

The objects are called maculars and are named after dark deities from various cultures, for example one of them is called a balrog together they form a giant structure called the brass knuckles that spans the celestial body along the equator the maculas are separated by tall Its surface is cut by deep rifts hundreds of kilometers long The Cthulhu macule extends west from Tombau Reggio It is the largest dark spot on Pluto, measuring nearly 3,000 kilometers Its reflective surface is no more than 30 percent of the light it sheds on it, which is a stark contrast to a bright and clear sputnikplanetia nearby there is still no reliable information on

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maculars are its dark color is assumed to be due to a high content of thurlins combined with a concentration relatively large number of impact craters this indicates that the macules are remarkably old.

The surface of the Cthulhu macula is also known to be heterogeneous, so that its relief in the western part is undulating, the central part is a smooth plane, and the east is covered with mountains and craters. Lowell Reggio the vast valley that surrounds the North Pole of Pluto surprisingly it is this place that is currently the most illuminated part of the surface of the celestial body the point is that Pluto's axis of rotation has a very large inclination with respect to the plane of its orbit so that in its movement it found itself facing the sun with its north pole it is assumed that it is for this reason that the density of Pluto's atmosphere has tripled in the last 30 years despite the increasing distance from the sun it is likely that the sun's rays evaporating nitrogen the ice settling to the pole entering the atmosphere of the dwarf planet in its orbital motion Pluto has a number of peculiarities compared to the planets of the solar system in addition to the fact that its orbit has a remarkable inclination towards the ecliptic plane the planetoid itself constantly performs cyclical movements oscillations near a certain point this is due to the presence of a large satellite that gravitationally affects the dwarf planet is called Sharon and its mass is 1.52 times 10 to the power of 21 kilograms which is more than 11 percent of the mass of Pluto itself as a Consequently, both celestial bodies orbit a common center of mass between them, they are tidally locked to each other, so they face the same sides at all times , they are like Pluto, the surface of their satellite is noticeably darker and shows a large amount of water ice that is mixed with methane and nitrogen only in some regions besides Sharon there are several other satellites but all of them are much smaller and of irregular shape Nixon Hydra

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ed in 2005 measures several tens of kilometers and kerberus and sticks that were discovered later are not With more than 16 kilometers in diameter, all these celestial bodies consist mainly of water ice and were probably captured by Pluto's gravity from the Kuiper belt.

Unfortunately, a significant part of Sharon was not captured in the field of view of the New Horizons probe cameras, but many curious terrains were. Features can be found on the visible surface of the celestial body, for example, south of the equator which is located in a vast region called Vulcan plenum, its area is not precisely known, but it is not less than 400,000 square kilometers, which which is comparable to the size. from an average European country here is the highest peak of Sharon kubrik Mars its diameter measures around 40 kilometers and according to some estimates its height reaches 4000 meters in addition the mountain is surrounded by a wide circular moat as if it were up to two kilometers deep According to some assumptions Kubrick mons In fact it may be a cryogenic volcano in this case it is very likely that the air around it has subsided under its own weight due to the amplification of the underground reservoir to the north stretches the vast Oz Terror the surface of which is marked with many craters, it is separated from the Vulcan plenum by a system of giant ledges and cracks with a total height of about one kilometer, the largest of them is Serenity kasma, which is 200 kilometers long with a width that varies from 40 to 50 kilometers.

It can be seven kilometers deep and its bottom difficult to explore due to the thick shadows cast by the steep northern slopes, but near the same pole is the giant macular of Mordor, its diameter reaches 475 kilometers and its origin is still debatable according to the prevailing hypothesis today, the nitrogen and methane floating in Pluto's atmosphere were trapped by Sharon's gravity and settled at its poles after exposure to ultraviolet radiation, turned into tholins and they gradually concentrated on the ice of the celestial body. being an object of future Sharon missions remains largely a mystery to us because their research is just beginning, although the Pluto Sharon system is undoubtedly one of the most interesting structures in the solar system, it has not yet been studied unfortunately, the New Horizons left its surroundings a long time ago. ago and the celestial bodies themselves are rapidly moving away from us taking their secrets with them at the moment when the probe is more than 50 astronomical units from Earth and from time to time it transmits to us some extremely important data for around 2030, all its systems will eventually fail and the probe will be left alone in the creepy corners of space, dear friends, we are currently not uploading new videos to our channel as frequently as we would prefer.

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