M. Buie / SwRI / NASA / ESA
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Click for video: Hubble Space Telescope images, taken in 2002-2003, were
combined to produce these maps of Pluto. Click on the image to watch Pluto spin.
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Pluto hasn’t been getting much respect lately, but today the Hubble Space Telescope’s team unveiled maps of the dwarf planet that are just a foretaste of the extreme close-up to come.
The maps spark fresh questions about the icy world that was discovered 80 years ago this month: Why has Pluto’s northern hemisphere brightened so quickly over the course of just a few years? What’s causing darker spots in the south? And why is Pluto getting redder all over?
“We think these changes are actually driven by seasonal changes,” said Marc Buie, a planetary scientist at the Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute.
Huge amounts of methane and nitrogen ice appear to be moving from one part of the world to another through Pluto’s wisp of an atmosphere. One particularly bright spot appears to be rich in frozen carbon monoxide.
So what’s the precise mechanism for the shift? “That’s a mystery,” Buie said. The complete answers might well have to wait until 2015, when NASA’s New Horizons probe swings past Pluto and its moons.
…(read more)