Pluto Geology

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The Geology of Pluto

Abstract
Pluto is tiny: the volume smaller than the Moon and the surface area smaller than that of Russia. It is so tiny that the barycentre of Pluto – Charon (the moon of Pluto) lies outside the Pluto and they gravitationally locked each other, which means they keep the same face orients each other. As a distant dwarf planet, its orbit is much longer than that of Earth – it takes roughly 248 Earth years to complete one rotation about the Sun. That means since people discovered Pluto in 1930 it has just completed one-third of the cycle. In this tiny distant world, its atmosphere and surface undergo interesting interactions and changes. This report is going to discuss the characteristics of Pluto's atmosphere and surface …show more content…
It was discovered in 1930 but information about this distant, mysterious dwarf planet was quite limited, deferring the understanding of its characters but still interested a lot of people. In 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto for the first time in the history and more detailed measurements in geology were made. Many distinctive geological features are found and Pluto keeps attracting people. Like other Kuiper bodies, it is mainly formed by ice mixed with rocks, but it is the only body in the Kuiper belt that has an atmosphere. Photos taken by the New Horizons reveal that this tiny dwarf planet owns highly variable landforms. Its eccentric orbital of higher inclination than other planets ranges from 29 to 39 astronomical units, meaning it is periodically getting closer to the Sun even than Neptune. It is the stable orbital resonance save them from colliding each other. Pluto is one of the bodies which have the highest level of contrast in the Solar System. Its surface colours include coal black, deep orange and white. Pluto and Io have similar colours, but Pluto's is more orangish. This report is going to discuss the unique characteristics of Pluto's geological features, such as its atmosphere and …show more content…
At first, wide freezing out and falling down of the atmosphere were expected at the perihelion, suggested by the strong influence of temperature on atmosphere compounds' sublimation pressure. However, more intensive models suggested that Pluto's atmosphere could last all the Pluto year ( Olkin et al., 2015). The influence of Pluto’s unique elliptic orbital on its atmosphere is: when Pluto is moving away from the Sun its atmosphere gradually freezes and when Pluto is approaching the Sun its surface temperature rises leading to sublimation of ices. Like sweat evaporates off skin, this distillation results in anti-greenhouse effect and cools down the surface. The surface pressure is between 0.65 and 2.4Pa. Although Pluto is moving away from the Sun at present, its atmosphere pressure has increased three times since 1988. The possible reason is in 1987 North Polar Region ended polar day period for the first time in 120 years and extra nitrogen sublimed. Early in 2010, photos taken by Hubble Space Telescope showed that this icy planet was changing its brightness and colour periodically. Pluto is distinctly redder than it used to be in the past several decades. And from 1994 to 2003 Pluto’s surface underwent a colour-changing: the north polar area brightened whereas the south polar area darkened
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