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Beautiful New Photos of Pluto Show Terrain, Atmosphere

posted by janrinok on Saturday September 19 2015, @12:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the stunning dept.

martyb writes:

CNET is reporting Beautiful new photos of Pluto show terrain, atmosphere.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has long since passed by Pluto, and is currently 4.96 billion kilometers (4.59 light hours) from Earth. But things are not over with yet. It is still sending back data and images from its flyby. On Earth we have the hydrological cycle in Greenland and the South Pole where water evaporates, falls as snow, builds up glaciers, which then flow out to restart the cycle. It appears that something very similar is happening on Pluto, but because of the incredibly frigid temperatures, this process is occurring with frozen Nitrogen.

NASA has stunning pictures and more complete descriptions.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday September 19 2015, @04:38PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday September 19 2015, @04:38PM (#238481) Journal

    I wonder if Pluto will get promoted back to planet status. It's round, it has an atmosphere, it has glacial activity, the surface is obviously active, otherwise there'd be more non-eroded craters.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 19 2015, @10:32PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 19 2015, @10:32PM (#238566) Homepage Journal

    IMO, yeah, it's a planet. It dominates everything in it's orbit. It is the primary, and it has satellites of it's own. That, along with the conditions you have cited, makes it a planet. I've read the reasons for demoting Pluto several times, and it just doesn't make sense to me.

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