                APOD: 2017 October 5 - Pluto s Bladed Terrain

                         Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! [1] Each day a different image or photograph of our
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                                2017 October 5
                                      [2]
                            Pluto's Bladed Terrain
   Image Credit: NASA [3] , Johns Hopkins Univ./APL [4] , Southwest Research
                                Institute [5]

Explanation: Imaged during [6]  the New Horizons spacecraft flyby in July
2015, Pluto's bladed terrain is captured in this close-up of the distant
world. The bizarre texture belongs [7]  to fields of skyscraper-sized, jagged
landforms made almost entirely of methane ice, found at extreme altitudes near
Pluto's equator. Casting dramatic shadows [8] , the tall, knife-like ridges
seem to have been formed by sublimation. By that process, condensed methane
ice turns directly to methane gas without passing through a liquid phase
during Pluto's warmer geological periods. On planet Earth, sublimation can
also produce standing fields of knife-like ice sheets, found along the high
plateau of the Andes mountain range. Known as penitentes [9] , those bladed
structures are made of water ice and at most a few meters tall.

                   Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space [10]

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    Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff [22] (MTU [23] ) & Jerry Bonnell [24]
                                  (UMCP [25] )
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                           & Michigan Tech. U. [31]
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Site notes:
  [1] archivepix.html
  [2] image/1710/pluto_02NH.jpg
  [3] http://www.nasa.gov/
  [4] http://www.jhuapl.edu/
  [5] http://www.swri.edu/
  [6] https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21965
  [7] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/
solving-the-mystery-of-pluto-s-giant-blades-of-ice
  [8] ap160402.html
  [9] ap130907.html
  [10] ap171006.html
  [11] ap171004.html
  [12] archivepix.html
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