This newly released image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows a chain of snowcapped mountains in Pluto’s Cthulhu Regio.
Methane snow-capped mountains in Cthulhu Regio, Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
Cthulhu Regio is about 1,850 miles (3,000 km) long and 450 miles (750 km) wide.
This cratered region stretches nearly halfway around Pluto’s equator, starting from the west of Sputnik Planum.
Its appearance is characterized by a dark surface, which planetary researchers think is due to being covered by a layer of dark tholins.
Cthulhu’s geology exhibits a wide variety of landscapes – from mountainous to smooth, and to heavily cratered and fractured.
The reddish enhanced color image (above, and the left inset below) reveals a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that’s 260 miles (420 km) long.
The image was obtained by New Horizons at a range of 21,100 miles (33,900 km) from the dwarf planet, about 45 minutes before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015.
The mountain range is situated among craters, with narrow valleys separating its peaks.
The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red color of the surrounding plains.
Members of the New Horizons science team think this bright material could be predominantly methane that has condensed as ice onto the peaks from the atmosphere of Pluto.
“That this material coats only the upper slopes of the peaks suggests methane ice may act like water in Earth’s atmosphere, condensing as frost at high altitude,” said Dr. John Stansberry of Space Telescope Science Institute.
Compositional data from New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera, shown in the right inset in the image below, indicates that the location of the bright ice on the mountain peaks correlates almost exactly with the distribution of methane ice, shown in false color as purple.
Mountains in Cthulhu Regio. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
New Horizons is currently 3.3 billion miles (5.31 billion km) from Earth and 175.7 million miles (282.8 million km) beyond Pluto, with all systems healthy and operating normally.
The robotic spacecraft is on course for a close flyby of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 in January 2019.
