12 July 2015

Don't expect rivers of neon on Pluto

I'm really charged up about the coming flyby of Pluto two days from now.  Popular Science has a guide regarding what to expect.
With its suite of optical, ultraviolet, and infrared imaging tools, the spacecraft will swoop past Pluto at a distance of about 7,800 miles. From there, the 1,500-mile-wide planet will appear about as large as a basketball that’s four feet away...

The spacecraft’s trajectory was specifically planned to catch glimpses of Pluto’s four tinier moons as well—Styx, Nix, Hydra, and Kerberos...

Pluto’s atmosphere is thought to contain neon, and at the freezing cold temperatures on Pluto, neon condenses into a liquid. So it is technically possible that neon could flow like water on Pluto, but it is highly unlikely...

Charon might be suctioning off some of Pluto’s atmosphere. If so, it would be the first known case of a planet and a moon sharing an atmosphere...

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