Pluto

An artist's impression of the study shows an imaginary time sequence in which a star passes behind a trans-Neptunian body with an atmosphere. Credit: NAOJ

A small body beyond Neptune surprised astronomers: It has a thin atmosphere that was not supposed to exist

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A rare observation of 2002 XV93, a trans-Neptunian body about 500 km in diameter, has revealed signs of a very thin atmosphere. Researchers estimate that it should dissipate in less than a thousand years, so it may have been created or regenerated recently due to
A team of researchers used observations from the Webb Space Telescope (in white) to detect methane gas at Make-Make. Sharp emission peaks near 3.3 microns reveal methane in a gaseous state above the surface of Make-Make. A continuum model (in light blue) has been added for comparison. Gas emission peaks are identified where the observed spectrum rises above the continuum. An artist's impression of the surface of Make-Make is shown in the background. Credit: Courtesy of S. Protopapa, I. Wong/SwRI/STScI/NASA/ESA/CSA

Webb Telescope Discovers Gas for the First Time on Distant Dwarf Planet Makemake

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The discovery makes Make-Make only the second trans-Neptunian body, after Pluto, to have gas detected. The researchers suggest that it may have a thin atmosphere or be geologically active.
The newly discovered trans-Neptunian object, 2017 OF201, hints at more hidden bodies beyond Neptune.

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious new world at the edge of the solar system.

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Trans-Neptunian object 2017 OF201, with a diameter of about 700 km and an extreme orbit of about 25,000 years, may be considered a dwarf planet – and hints at the existence of dozens of other hidden bodies beyond Neptune
New models suggest that Pluto and Charon were formed by a giant collision. This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left) was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system in 2015. Pluto and Charon are shown at approximately their relative sizes, but their true separation is not at the correct distance. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

How Pluto and its moon Charon were formed from a giant collision

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New research reveals that Pluto and its large moon Charon formed from a unique "kiss and capture" process following a giant collision, with significant implications for understanding the solar system.
In a paper published in the journal Icarus, Alex Nguyen, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, used mathematical models and images from the New Horizons spacecraft to take a closer look at the ocean that he says likely covers Pluto beneath a thick layer of nitrogen, methane and water ice. (Image: NASA)

Surprise: an ocean of liquid water on Pluto

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They estimate that Pluto's ocean is, at most, about 8% denser than seawater on Earth, or about the same as the Great Salt Lake in Utah (but much less salty than the Dead Sea.
Prof. Zvi Maza, photo: Tel Aviv University

Professor Zvi Maza is the winner of the Israel Prize in the field of physics research for 2024 - an overview of his main discoveries

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Professor Maza studied planets outside the solar system and even developed a method for discovering planets that allows expanding the search circle
An area near sunset on the dwarf planet Pluto. Photo: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Winds and an underground ocean - additional findings from Pluto

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A short passage that should reveal an unknown celestial gram. New Horizons visualization near Thule Ultima (not to scale) | Source: NASA

Three and a half years after Pluto, New Horizons flew past Thule Ultima in the Kuiper belt

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Dwarf Planet Candidate 2015 RR245 is in a fairly distant orbit, but is one of the few dwarf planets that can be visited by the New Horizons spacecraft. . Alex Parker/OSSOS, CC BY-SA

840 dwarf planets discovered beyond Neptune-Rahab - and what they can tell us

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Photo of Pluto from New Horizons in which Pluto's atmosphere can be seen. Source: NASA.

Pluto - additional findings

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Charon belt (in light blue). Courtesy of NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

New research sheds light on the formation of the tectonic belt around Pluto's moon Charon

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Didi, a distant object in the solar system with an estimated diameter of 635 km and is 3 times more distant than Pluto. Image: ALMA

Meet Didi, a distant and dim planetary body in our solar system

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A diagram showing all the round bodies in the solar system with a diameter of less than 10,000 km. If the researchers' proposal is accepted, at least 110 bodies in the solar system will be defined as planets. Source: Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. Data from NASA / JPL, JHUAPL/SwRI , SSI, and UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic, Ted Stryk, Bjorn Jonsson, Roman Tkachenko, and Emily Lakdawalla.

Why does a group of researchers want to reopen the debate on the definition of planets?

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Pluto in a photograph with artificial color designed to highlight differences in its surface, taken by New Horizons on July 14, 2015. Source: NASA.

Pluto - summary of findings, part four

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Pluto's north pole. Source: NASA.

Pluto - summary of findings, part three

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Pluto's majestic mountains, icy plains and misty haze as photographed just 15 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

Pluto - summary of findings, part two

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Pluto in a photograph with artificial color designed to highlight differences in its surface, taken by New Horizons on July 14, 2015. Source: NASA.

Pluto - summary of findings, first part

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Pluto's moons

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Charon Moon A color enhanced image of the Charon Moon as seen by the New Horizons probe on July 14, 2015 during a flyby of Pluto. Source: NASA.

Charon, Pluto's moon - summary of findings

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Illustration of the orbit of the dwarf planet RR245 (orange line), image: Alex Parker, OSSOS team

A dwarf planet has been discovered far beyond Pluto's orbit

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This artist's illustration shows the possible appearance of the ninth planet from the Sun, which is likely to be composed mostly of gases similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning illuminates the night side. Illustration: Caltech

Indirect evidence for the existence of a ninth planet: a gas giant that orbits the Sun once every ten thousand years

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Kalachao Siyum, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, of Ethiopian origin, presents the jawbone he discovered at a site in the Afar state in Ethiopia, which dates back the first species in the human lineage to 2.8 million years. Photo: Arizona State University

Summary of the year 2015 in science

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Mountains and plains on Pluto as photographed about 15 minutes before the great approach, plus a color photograph of the same area at a lower resolution (due to the distance from which it was photographed) allow a glimpse of the spectacular views. Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Pluto: first color images

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A crater scarred by meteorite impacts that allow a glimpse of what's going on under the ground. Photo: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft

NASA has released spectacular close-up photos of Pluto

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To the right, east of Sputnik, the plain is cut by what appear to be glaciers, the sunlight illuminating the area from behind highlights over a dozen layers of haze in the thin but inflated atmosphere. The photo was taken from a distance of about 18 thousand kilometers and the width of the photographed area is 1,250 kilometers. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Pluto continues to surprise and show similarities to Earth

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In the center of the image, to the left of Pluto's huge route that resembles a heart shape, lies the Tombo area (named after Pluto's discoverer). It is a vast craterless plain that appears to be at most a hundred million years old and may still be shaped by geological processes. This icy region north of Pluto's ice mountains has been named the Sputnik Plain in honor of the first artificial satellite. The surface appears divided into irregular shaped segments surrounded by narrow rings. In addition, there are groups of mounds and fields of small pits in this area. This image was taken by the LORRI camera on July 14 from a distance of 77,000 kilometers. Details smaller than a kilometer can be seen. Some of my areas look raw due to the image compression. Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

New Horizons photographed the icy plains inside Pluto's "heart"

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A mountain in a depression on Charon, Pluto's large moon. Photo: NASA-JHUAPL-SwR

Another New Horizons surprise from the Pluto system: a mountain surrounded by a canal in Charon

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High mountains near Pluto's equator as captured by the New Horizons spacecraft cameras. Photo: NASA SwRI

Surprising discovery: New Horizons photographed young mountains on Pluto and Charon

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New Horizons "phoned home" to announce that it survived the transit near Pluto * The photos will arrive in a trickle over the next year and a half

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The dwarf planet Pluto (on the left) and its moons as a coffin in artificial colors that emphasize the differences in the route of the terrain and the composition of the materials on their surfaces. Photographed in three color filters by the Ralph instrument aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, July 13, 2015.

Images of Pluto and Charon taken by New Horizons in artificial colors highlight the enormous variety of terrain trajectory on these two worlds

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"Members of the New Horizons science team cheer on the sharp images that came from Pluto before the flyby today, July 14, 2015 at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA is celebrating the passage of New Horizons at the closest point to Pluto and is waiting to renew contact with it early in the morning

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Prof. Nitzan Zohar. Photo: Technion

Technion researchers have proposed a model for finding new moons for Pluto, awaiting New Horizons photographs

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The brave new worlds Pluto and Charon are in the focus of the field of view of the LORRI camera on the New Horizons spacecraft. Photo: NASA TV

New Horizons revealed: Pluto's diameter is 2,370 km

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Did they come from one source? The surface of Pluto and in the background its large moon, Charon. Image: NASA

Pluto - a point of light in the darkness

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Discoverer of Pluto, the girl who gave him his name and the actor Leonard Nimoy will be commemorated on Pluto and Charon

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New Horizons' latest look at the side of Pluto facing Charon reveals interesting geological details of interest to mission scientists. The images taken on the morning of July 11th show straight formations that are the first time they have been seen above the equatorial region, in the form of interlocking polygons. The image was taken when the spacecraft was 4 million kilometers away from Pluto. Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

New Horizons approaches Pluto - photographed the enigmatic dark spots

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The New Horizons spacecraft against the background of the planet Pluto. Image: NASA

A historic meeting

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Interesting hints of Pluto's geology are revealed in this image taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 9, 2015 from a distance of 5.4 million kilometers from here. This annotated version of the image shows a large dark formation known as "The Whale" located on Pluto's equator, with a narrow band and elaborate polygons. In the lower part of the image is a photograph of Pluto, in which the area covered by the camera is highlighted, with the equator and the main longitude marked in bold. Photo: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI

A whale on Pluto

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Color image of Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft cameras, 6/7/15. In the picture you can see the mysterious dark spots. Photo: NASA

NASA: The New Horizons spacecraft is back to full functionality after the computer went into safe mode on Saturday

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This image taken on June 29, 2015 shows the large feature - most likely a crater on the underside of Pluto (the larger object). Charon also shows dark formations. The diameter of Pluto is 2,367 kilometers - about a thousand kilometers less than the Earth's moon. Charon's diameter is about 1,200 km. Photo: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Two weeks left for the New Horizons transit near Pluto

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This visualization shows the chaotic whirl of the holiday moon Nix around Pluto. The series of computer simulations shows how the direction of the moon changes according to the unpredictable complex dynamic rules as it orbits the double planet - Pluto-Charon.

Pluto's small moons Nix and Hydra swirl chaotically around themselves

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An illustration of Pluto based on data sent by the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to it. Pluto inexplicably has an atmosphere, albeit a thin one, and its surface appears to be a bright peach-red color, but also areas of white and dark red. Illustration: An artist's illustration of Pluto. (Illust. Credit: NASA/New Horizons)

New Horizons approaches Pluto - discovered signs of polar caps

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The New Horizons spacecraft hovers above Pluto and its large moon Charon. Artist illustration: NASA

Good morning Pluto: The New Horizons probe has woken up and is ready for mission

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The solar system - the outer planets align once every 179 years

The Grand Tour - the unlaunched spacecraft to several planets for one price

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An artist's illustration shows Pluto and several of its moons as seen from the surface of one of the moons. Pluto is the large disc in the center. Charon is the smallest disk on the right. Figure: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI)

Preparing for New Horizons' arrival at Pluto: Searching for evidence of a subsurface ocean on moon Charon; Hubble will look for other worlds beyond Pluto

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2012 VP113, the most distant object in the Solar System, as of March 2014, as seen in successive observations two hours apart on November 5, 2012. The findings were published on March 27, 2014 in Nature

The most distant object in the solar system has been discovered (when it bypasses Sadna in part of its orbit) * The researchers: It is possible that there are objects at the edge of the solar system larger than the Earth

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Solar System. Illustration: shutterstock

Mathematical calculations for discovering planets - is history repeating itself these days?

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Pluto's fifth moon has been discovered

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This montage of two images shows Pluto's four moons in motion

Hubble discovered a new moon for Pluto, fourth in number

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20 Future NASA Missions

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