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Related: About this forumDoes Pluto have a tail?
Source: Sen.com via Christian Science Monitor
Does Pluto have a tail?
By Paul Sutherland, Sen JULY 19, 2015
SenNASAs New Horizons team revealed fresh findings about Pluto today including a close-up of a vast cracked and icy plain and the existence of a tail caused by the escaping atmosphere.
Opening a press conference, Jim Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: What a historic week! And the missions principal investigator Alan Stern said: Weve just had the most fun. Plutos becoming a brand. It sells itself. You dont really have to work that hard! He added: Im a little biased, but I think the Solar System saved the best for last!
First image shown was a heavily pixellated picture of one of Plutos tiny moons, Nix. Stern, from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado, said that despite the low resolution, it showed in twice as many pixels as the best Earth-based image of Puto, which was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Another image showed how early measurements have revealed an excess of the gas carbon monoxide over the bright, heart-shaped region. Stern said that no other concentration of the gas anything like that had been detected elsewhere on Pluto.
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Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0719/Does-Pluto-have-a-tail-video
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(5,829 posts)Pluto's atmosphere swept back like a comet's tail
NASAs New Horizons mission confirmed that Plutos atmosphere has a cavity in the solar wind, revealing a long plasma tail reminiscent of a comets ion tail.
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http://news.discovery.com/space/plutos-atmosphere-is-swept-back-like-a-comets-tail-150720.htm?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dnewsnewsletter