Even if it has been more than half a year since the probe’s fly-by of Pluto, the New Horizons data still keeps shedding light on Pluto. Images of the planet and data reads have been incoming from the distant probe ever since it has gone out of hibernation and gone back in action. This data has gone through multiple testing phases and research with the scientists from NASA since; after that, the data has slowly been made available to the public in order to share with the rest of humanity just how far our species has gone.
The most recent discovery that has been thrown our way by the NASA newsfeed is a beautiful picture of Pluto’s North Pole. The image was taken by New Horizons using the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), at an altitude of 21,100 miles from the surface of Pluto and about 45 minutes after the probe’s closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14th 2015.
The image depicts heavily battered terrain and incredibly long canyons scarring the entirety of that area. The canyons run through Pluto’s Lowell Region – also known as the Percival Lowell area – some of them as wide as 45 miles across. A closer study made on the nature of the canyons that seem to run close to the north pole of the planet has revealed that the ravines walls appear to look old; at least older than other, sharper canyon regions that were found on the planet.
Scientists have theorized two possible reasons for that: one would be that the canyons in this region are made of weaker materials that degrade faster. The other explanation would suggest that Pluto had tectonic activity in the past. The deepest of canyons measure about 2.5 miles depth in this particular region. Researchers also theorized that their creation may very well have been a result of subsurface ice melting below the ground, eventually causing a cave-in.
Scientists have also made a point of observing the yellow terrains that are particularly visible closer to the North Pole than they are in the other regions of the planet. While it’s not with a hundred percent certainty, scientists suspect that the hue is a result of methane deposits that ended up being processed more by the solar radiation than bluer terrain in other zones on the planet.
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