Publication Date:
2016-03-19
Description:
Observations made during the New Horizons flyby provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of Pluto's atmosphere. Whereas the lower atmosphere (at altitudes of less than 200 kilometers) is consistent with ground-based stellar occultations, the upper atmosphere is much colder and more compact than indicated by pre-encounter models. Molecular nitrogen (N2) dominates the atmosphere (at altitudes of less than 1800 kilometers or so), whereas methane (CH4), acetylene (C2H2), ethylene (C2H4), and ethane (C2H6) are abundant minor species and likely feed the production of an extensive haze that encompasses Pluto. The cold upper atmosphere shuts off the anticipated enhanced-Jeans, hydrodynamic-like escape of Pluto's atmosphere to space. It is unclear whether the current state of Pluto's atmosphere is representative of its average state--over seasonal or geologic time scales.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Gladstone, G Randall -- Stern, S Alan -- Ennico, Kimberly -- Olkin, Catherine B -- Weaver, Harold A -- Young, Leslie A -- Summers, Michael E -- Strobel, Darrell F -- Hinson, David P -- Kammer, Joshua A -- Parker, Alex H -- Steffl, Andrew J -- Linscott, Ivan R -- Parker, Joel Wm -- Cheng, Andrew F -- Slater, David C -- Versteeg, Maarten H -- Greathouse, Thomas K -- Retherford, Kurt D -- Throop, Henry -- Cunningham, Nathaniel J -- Woods, William W -- Singer, Kelsi N -- Tsang, Constantine C C -- Schindhelm, Eric -- Lisse, Carey M -- Wong, Michael L -- Yung, Yuk L -- Zhu, Xun -- Curdt, Werner -- Lavvas, Panayotis -- Young, Eliot F -- Tyler, G Leonard -- New Horizons Science Team -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Mar 18;351(6279):aad8866. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8866.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 78238, USA. University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA. rgladstone@swri.edu. ; Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA. ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ames Research Center, Space Science Division, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. ; The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723, USA. ; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ; The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. ; Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. ; Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. ; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 78238, USA. ; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 78238, USA. University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA. ; Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, NE 68504, USA. ; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ; Max-Planck-Institut fur Sonnensystemforschung, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. ; Groupe de Spectroscopie Moleculaire et Atmospherique, Universite Reims Champagne-Ardenne, 51687 Reims, France.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26989258" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
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Medicine
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Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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