{"id":6114,"date":"2016-10-24T19:58:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T00:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=6114"},"modified":"2016-10-24T19:58:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T00:58:21","slug":"the-clouds-of-pluto-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/10\/24\/the-clouds-of-pluto-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clouds of Pluto, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA<\/strong><\/em> published<\/a> further information on the Plutonian features tentatively identified as clouds<\/a> a few days ago:<\/p>\n

\"nh-possiblecloudsonpluto\"<\/a>

Credits: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SwRI<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

[Alan Stern, principal investigator] said that Pluto\u2019s complex, layered atmosphere is hazy and appears to be mostly free of clouds, but the team has spied a handful of potential clouds in images taken with New Horizons\u2019 cameras. \u201cIf there are clouds, it would mean the weather on Pluto is even more complex than we imagined,\u201d Stern said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, the New Horizons<\/strong><\/em> space probe\u00a0is not inactive, but is instead observing Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs):<\/p>\n

Both Hubble and cameras on the New Horizons spacecraft have been aimed at KBOs over the past two years, with New Horizons taking advantage of its unique vantage point in the Kuiper Belt to observe nearly a dozen small worlds in this barely explored region. MU69 is actually the smallest KBO to have its color measured \u2013 and scientists have used that data to confirm the object is part of the so-called cold classical region of the Kuiper Belt, which is believed to contain some of the oldest, most prehistoric material in the solar system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reddish color tells us the type of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 is,\u201d said Amanda Zangari, a New Horizons post-doctoral researcher from Southwest Research Institute. \u201cThe data confirms that on New Year\u2019s Day 2019, New Horizons will be looking at one of the ancient building blocks of the planets.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA published further information on the Plutonian features tentatively identified as clouds a few days ago: [Alan Stern, principal investigator] said that Pluto\u2019s complex, layered atmosphere is hazy and appears to be mostly free of clouds, but the team has spied a handful of potential clouds in images taken with \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6116,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114\/revisions\/6116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}