Methane ice dunes spotted on Pluto

摘要

Pluto's heart-shaped plains are striped with sand dunes, where the sand is made of methane ice, a new study finds. Images from the New Horizons spacecraft's 2015 flyby of Pluto show 357 linear ridges that planetary scientist Matt Telfer of the University of Plymouth in England and colleagues interpret as dunes that have been shaped by a novel process. The ripples lie parallel to a mountain range at the western edge of Sputnik Planitia, the wide plains of nitrogen and methane ice that form part of Pluto's famous heart-shaped region. Relatively strong winds, traveling about 1 to 10 meters per second, should blow from the mountains across the plains, Telfer's group reports in the June 1 Science.