New Horizons Reveals Pluto’s 248-Year World of Blue Haze and Floating Ice Mountains

3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 15

2015 New Horizons data showed Pluto has a blue atmospheric haze, water-ice mountains and nitrogen glaciers—evidence that the dwarf planet is geologically active rather than a static frozen relic.
38 kelvin temperatures flip familiar roles: water ice becomes rigid bedrock, while softer nitrogen ice flows through Sputnik Planitia, where convection likely renews the surface and helps explain its scarcity of impact craters.
One- to several-kilometre water-ice blocks scattered across that plain are thought to drift like icebergs because they are less dense than nitrogen ice, though New Horizons did not observe their motion directly.
6.4-day Pluto-Charon orbits also underscore the system’s oddity: both bodies circle a barycentre outside Pluto, while Charon remains officially classified as a moon.
248 Earth years for one Pluto orbit means humans have observed less than 40% of a Plutonian year, so the July 2015 flyby captured only one seasonal phase of a long-changing world.

Sources

Is Pluto's blue atmosphere quietly freezing and collapsing as the dwarf planet journeys further into the dark outer solar system?

Could hidden liquid nitrogen springs be secretly fueling the bizarre, glacier-like movements across Pluto's frozen, alien landscape?

Did a violent ancient collision create the bizarre binary dance between Pluto and its unusually large moon?