Cthulhu Regio, an 1,850 mile (3,000 km) stretch along Pluto’s equator that is one of the most recognizable features on the dwarf planet, is home to a mountain range which appears to be coated in methane ice, NASA officials revealed in a statement released late last week.
Roughly 450 miles (750 km) wide and slightly larger than the state of Alaska, Cthulhu begins to the west of the massive nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum, the US space agency said. It is characterized by a dark surface, which scientists believe is because the area is covered by a layer of tholins – molecules that form when methane is exposed to sunlight.
Geologically speaking, the region is home to several different types of terrain, and a new reddish enhanced color image released by NASA, there is a 260 miles (420 km) long mountain range in the southeastern part of Cthulhu. That mountain range contains peaks blanketed with a bright substance that contrasts sharply with the dark red hue of its surroundings, and scientists believe that coating is methane ice.
“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,” New Horizons science team member John Stansberry of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, said on Thursday.
Find comes just days after the discovery of polar canyons
According to Stansberry and his colleagues, compositional data collected by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) instrument (which can been seen in the right inset of the new image) indicates that the bright ice on the mountain peaks is located in almost the exact same locations as methane ice (depicted in false color as purple).
This enhanced color image was captured in a resolution of nearly 2,230 feet (680 meters) per pixel, and measures roughly 280 miles (450 km) long by 140 miles (225 km) wide, said NASA. It was taken approximately 45 minutes before New Horizon’s closest approach to Pluto, when it was about 21,100 miles (33,900 km) away from the surface of the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015.
The newest image comes less than two weeks after the release of one that led to the discovery of wide frozen canyons in Pluto’s north polar region – specifically, long canyons running vertically along the area of the dwarf planet informally called Lowell Regio, the largest of which was some 45 miles (75 km) and which is located close to the dwarf planet’s north pole, the agency said.
Two other canyons, running roughly parallel along either side of the widest one, were about six miles (10 kilometers) wide and contained degraded walls that seem to indicate that they were much older than those found elsewhere on Pluto’s surface. The canyons also contained what appeared to be evidence that the dwarf planet had once been home to significant tectonic activity.
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Image credit: NASA
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