NASA on Pluto

NASA on Pluto: Pluto is ‘not simply a ball of ice and rock.’

Today, NASA released new photos today of a lot of Baby Boomers favorite former planet, Pluto.

According to NASA, the photos, were taken in the early 2000s by the Hubble Space Telescope, are the some of the “most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant small planet.”

“The Hubble pictures confirm Pluto is a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes and Pluto is not simply a ball of ice and rock,” states NASA.

Unfortunately, Pluto’s glamour shots won’t be enough to get Pluto registered back again as a planet.

What is the world coming to? We are losing saints, planets, and even some of our hero’s are losing their star studded grace.

NASA’s pictures come just as Pluto is heading into a new phase of its 248 year orbit around the sun, NASA says:

NASA on Pluto…Pluto is very different than Earth. Earth’s tilt drives it’s seasons. Pluto’s seasons are asymmetric because of its elliptical orbit. Spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere, because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the Sun.

Space.com says new colors and features of Pluto came to light in the new glamour shots of Pluto.:

The surface appears reddish, yellowish, grayish in places, with the new views of Pluto revealing a weird bright spot that is particularly puzzling to scientists. 

Scientists are merely surmising that some of the colors revealed in the new pictures of Pluto are thought to be the result from ultraviolet radiation from the sun interacting with the methane gases in the tenuous atmosphere of the small planet. The bright spot that shows up near the equator of Pluto, has been found in other observations to be an unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost.

Poor Pluto lost its status in our solar system as the ninth planet back in 2006. An international group of scientists decided that it was too small and too distant to be considered a member of the Earth’s solar system family.

I disagree, but then I am not part of that group. Even though Pluto is considerably smaller and more distant than the other planets in our solar system, and coming in as only two thirds the size of our moon..Pluto’s classification as a planet came under fire when many objects of similar size and distance were discovered in the Kuiper Belt in the 1990s.

For the full story of “NASA on Pluto,” go to CNN News.