🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: The dramatic fall in atmospheric pressure on Pluto is much larger than astronomers expected.
Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsPluto’s atmosphere is hard to observe from Earth. It can only be studied when Pluto passes in front of a distant star, allowing astronomers to see the effect the atmosphere has on starlight. When this happened in 2016, it confirmed that Pluto’s atmosphere was growing, a trend that astronomers had observed since 1988, when they noticed it for the first time.
First, some background. Astronomers have long known that Pluto’s atmosphere expands as it approaches the sun and contracts as it recedes. When the sun heats its icy surface, it sublimates, releasing nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When it moves away, the atmosphere is thought to freeze and fall out of the sky in what must be one of the most spectacular ice storms in the solar system.
Planetary geologists think Sputnik Planitia plays an important role in regulating Pluto’s atmosphere. That’s because, when it faces the sun, it releases gas into the atmosphere. Simulations suggest that this is why Pluto’s atmosphere has continued to grow, even as it has begun to move away from the sun.
Nevertheless, these same simulations suggest that, since 2015, Sputnik Planitia should have begun to cool, causing the atmosphere to condense into ice. Arimatsu and colleagues say that’s probably what’s behind their new observation.
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