New NASA photo shows the canyons and pits of Pluto's northern pole

Feb 26, 2016, 19:27

Either side of the main yellow region are two smaller canyons, approximately six miles wide. The widest of these canyons is roughly 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide and is located close to Pluto's north pole, and is shaded yellow in one of the newly-released pictures. The northernmost region was named Lowell Regio, albeit casually, in honor of the Lowell Observatory founder Percival Lowell who contributed to the planet's discovery. On the bottom-right, the terrains appears to have been covered by material that obscures the small-scale topographic features, which gives the landscape a "softened" appearance.

To get a better understanding of just how large and deep all these pits are, the widest area of the planet seen in this photo measures 21,000 miles across. The places colored in red are pits - NASA believes they were caused by the ground giving out after the ice underneath melted or sublimated.

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The composition and colour if this region of Pluto - shown in enhanced colour - are unusual.

"One possibility is that the yellow terrains may correspond to older methane deposits that have been more processed by solar radiation than the bluer terrain", said Will Grundy, New Horizons composition team lead from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.

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The image that served as the basis for these new observations was captured using New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) instrument. Its resolution is about 2,230 feet (680 metres) per pixel.

When NASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto in July 2015, scientists weren't expecting much. With a length of 1,800 kilometers, Serenity is about four times as long as the Grand Canyon. Findings also showed the presence of little nitrogen ice.

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