NASA Reveals Pluto Has Blue Skies & Water Ice, Still Not A Planet


The prickly question that routinely plagues us, folks? Still in the negative, we’re ‘fraid to say:


🙁 🙁 🙁 

However, the lil non-planet that couldn’t has been the subject of a landmark NASA announcement overnight, as information from the historic New Horizons mission to Pluto has been revealed. 

In an extensive post on Tumblr, NASA detailed the discoveries from New Horizons – including information on Pluto’s heart, its “water ice”, its “majestic” mountains and blue skies. Four announcements for you, Pluto – you go, Pluto! And only one for Mars, bye.

On Pluto’s sweet lil <3, NASA says: “This stunning image of one of the planet’s most dominate features shows us that the heart’s diameter is about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago. This image also showed us that Pluto is a complex world with incredible geological diversity.”

The space agency also released images of streaks of water ice that appear on Pluto’s surface, but said the reason of the ice’s irregular dispersion remained a mystery still in need of investigating.

“Large expanses of Pluto don’t show exposed water ice. Because it’s apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into.”


HEYO, BB PATCHES OF ICE!

And on the first colour image released of Pluto’s atmosphere, NASA expressed their surprise at discovering Pluto’s blue skies: “Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous.”

She’s a beauty:

Read NASA’s post on tumblr in full here. 

via The Independent. 

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