Snowcapped mountains visible on Pluto’s surface

The New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic snowcapped mountains stretching across the dark expanse on Pluto informally named Cthulhu Regio. (NASA)

 

New Horizon continues to send back data from last year’s Pluto encounter, and the latest shows a chain of bright snowcapped mountains not very different from those seen on Earth.

The mountain chain is located in the southernmost region visible on Pluto’s encounter side, in the equatorial region beneath the dark area known as Cthulhu Regio.

These snowcaps are composed not of water ice as on Earth but of atmospheric methane, which at high elevations condenses into frost.

Located southwest of the vast nitrogen ice plain known as Sputnik Planum, which some mission scientists are now referring to as Sputnik Planitia in recognition of the region’s low elevation, the mountain range reaches north into Cthulhu Regio.

Sharply cut valleys that measure several miles across and tens of miles wide are visible between the mountains.

A second network of smaller, branched valleys is located at the east end of the region. Mission scientists think this area was once covered with nitrogen ice much like Sputnik Planum.

If Sputnik Planum’s ice was once at a higher elevation than it is now, nitrogen ice could have flowed downward, creating the valleys.

A close up of the image with north at the top, captured just 45 minutes before closest approach from a distance of 21,100 miles (33,900 km) was marked by scientists to highlight its unique features.

With a resolution of about 2,230 feet (680 meters) per pixel, the enhanced color image was captured by the spacecraft’s Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC).

The valleys separating the mountains in the southwest are highlighted with white arrows while the smaller ones in the east are marked with blue arrows.

Visible toward the center of the region are flat-floored, irregularly shaped depressions, some of which stretch more than 50 miles (80 km) across and run more than two miles (3 km) deep.

They are highlighted by green arrows.

Because the depressions are so wide and deep, scientists believe they formed when their surfaces collapsed and not through ice sublimating into the atmosphere.

The variety of geological features visible in this image hints at what might lay hidden in the adjacent regions New Horizons could not photograph because they were shrouded in darkness.