The scientists working at NASA’s New Horizons mission keep on analyzing the photographs that the spacecraft is sending after its July 14, 2015 flyby with the dwarf planet Pluto. The ones received in recent days show that in the heart-shaped area there are flowing glaciers and that in the atmosphere there are thick layers of haze that reach an altitude of 130 kilometers (about 80 miles).

In the heart-shaped region on Pluto there’s an area that was called Sputnik Planum where there are glaciers containing nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices. At the temperatures existing on the surface, around -234 degrees Celsius (about -390° Fahrenheit), these glaciers can move as happens on Earth.

John Spencer, one of the investigators of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), which cooperates with NASA at the New Horizons mission, pointed out that such surfaces have been seen only on active worlds such as the Earth and Mars. The previous images of Pluto already showed signs of recent geological activity, in this case there are glaciers that flowed and maybe are still flowing in a manner similar to those on Earth.

The New Horizons space probe kept on examining Pluto after its flyby. The next day it was in a position at approximately 2 million kilometers (about about 1.25 million miles) from the dwarf planet in which it hid the Sun. As a result, it was able to shoot images in which the sunlight passed through Pluto’s atmosphere.

The images of Pluto’s atmosphere revealed the existence of hazes up to an altitude of 130 kilometers (80 miles) above the surface, much higher than the scientists thought. A preliminary analysis shows two distinct layers of haze, one about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above sea level and the other at an altitude of about 50 kilometers (30 miles).

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The hazes detected are a key element in the creation of the hydrocarbons in Pluto’s atmosphere that give it a reddish tinge. These hazes are likely formed when ultraviolet sunlight breaks the molecules of methane gas, present in abundance at high altitudes. The simpler molecules produced in this way recombine into more complex ones such as ethylene and acetylene, detected by New Horizons.

When the new hydrocarbons produced fall into the lower, colder, layers of the Pluto’s atmosphere, they condense into icy particles that create the hazes. More reactions caused by the ultraviolet radiations turn these hazes into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.

Another interesting measurement in atmosphere of Pluto is its pressure. It was measured in the past decade using observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and showed that it was in an expanding phase. Instead, the latest observations by the New Horizons space probe show a drop in air pressure. Pluto has a highly elliptical orbit and is in the process of getting farther from the Sun so its atmosphere is likely to be freezing.

All these phenomena will keep on being studied as new photographs and other data will come from the New Horizons space probe. It’s transmitting them very slowly so it will take many months in which there will be a lot of work for the scientists working at the mission because Pluto is revealing a number of very interesting features.