Research Identifies Icy Ridges on Pluto

Moores, along with his York postgraduate fellow, Dr. Christina Smith, Dr. Anthony Toigo, at the Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University and NASA Research Astrophysicist, Dr. Scott D. Guzewich, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA compared their model to ridges on Pluto imaged by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. Pluto’s ridges are much larger – 500 metres tall and separated by three to five kilometres – as compared to their meter-sized earthly counterparts.

Pluto with icy ridges

Photo Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

“This gargantuan size is predicted by the same theory that explains the formation of these features on Earth,” says Moores. “In fact, we were able to match the size and separation, the direction of the ridges, as well as their age: three pieces of evidence that support our identification of these ridges as penitentes.”

Moores says though Pluto’s environment is very different from the Earth – it is much colder, the air much thinner, the sun much dimmer and the snow and ice on the surface are made from methane and nitrogen instead of water – the same laws of nature apply. Both NASA and Johns Hopkins University were instrumental in the collaboration that led to this new finding. Both provided background information on Pluto’s atmosphere using a model similar to what meteorologists use to forecast weather on Earth. This was one of the key ingredients in Moores’ own models of the penitentes, without which this discovery would not have been made.

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