Well, we've really gone and done it now- Pluto (the planet, not the dog) seems to be getting colder. I don't know what you red-meat-eating, no-catalytic-converter-truck-driving, hydrocarbon-spewing people are doing, but now it's affecting other planets in the solar system. The lib-tards and tree-huggers are gonna have a field day with this!

WASHINGTON – Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there.

Color astronomers surprised.

Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show the distant one-time planet — demoted to "dwarf planet" status in 2006 — is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting.

The photos, released by NASA Thursday, paint a Pluto that is significantly redder than it had been for the past several decades. To the layman, it has a yellow-orange hue, but astronomers say it has about 20 percent more red than it used to have.

The pictures show icy frozen nitrogen on Pluto's surface growing and shrinking, brightening in the north and darkening in the south. Astronomers say Pluto's surface is changing more than the surfaces of other bodies in the solar system. That's unexpected because a season lasts 120 years in some regions of Pluto.

"It's a little bit of a surprise to see these changes happening so big and so fast," said astronomer Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "This is unprecedented."

From 1954 to 2000, Pluto didn't change in color when it was photographed from Earth. But after that, it did. The red levels increased by 20 percent, maybe up to 30 percent, and stabilized from about 2000 to 2002, Buie said. It's not as red as Mars, however, Buie said.

Buie said he can explain the redness, but not why it changed so dramatically and so recently. The planet has a lot of methane, which contains carbon and hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen gets stripped off by solar winds and other factors, leaving carbon-rich areas on the surface, which tend to be red and dark.

The Hubble photos were taken in 2002 and the analysis took a few years. But why Pluto changed so quickly was such a mystery that Buie held off for years on announcing what he had found, worried that he might be wrong. However, since Pluto's moon Charon hadn't changed color in the same telescope images, he decided the Pluto findings weren't an instrument mistake.

His analysis also found that nitrogen ice was shifting in size and density in surprising ways. It's horribly cold on Pluto with, paradoxically, the bright spots being the coldest at about -382 degrees Fahrenheit. Astronomers are still arguing about the temperatures of the warm dark spots, which Buie believes may be 30 degrees warmer than the darker areas.

Part of the difficulty in figuring out what is going on with Pluto is that it takes the dwarf planet 248 years to circle the sun, so astronomers don't know what conditions are like when it's is farthest from the sun. The last time Pluto was at its farthest point was in 1870, which was decades before Pluto was discovered. Unlike Earth, Pluto's four seasons aren't equal lengths of time.

Buie's explanation makes sense, said retired NASA astronomer Stephen Maran, co-author of a book on Pluto. "Pluto is interesting and poorly understood, whether it qualifies as a planet or not," he said.

 

"That's unexpected because a season lasts 120 years in some regions of Pluto."

Amazing how they can piece all of this together.

I don't remember the exact temp but isn't absolute zero like -450* or something? Thats wicked.

 

So nobody's buying the shrinking polar caps on earth story, so we're gonna start on pluto now? Didn't realize global warming was getting so severe to effect the whole solar system.

 

I think it's kinda funny that they would be surprised at 'changes' when they have only observed 1/5 of the orbit. Kinda like the ozone hole. OH my God there is a hole in the ozone, the world is ending!!! Were all gonna get cancer!!!! Evil hair spray, refrigerators and air conditioners are killing the earth!!! Kill them all!!!! Regulate it, Tax it, out law it!!! Oh wait a minute, it closed. Oh crap now it's open, kill them again! Oh now it's closed again. I guess it just does that. Sorry. Don't bother removing the laws, we need to be safe. Just in case.

Oh BTW Mr. Nate - you get the DTR Big Brain award!! - Absolute Zero = 459.67* F.

 

I'm a bit into astronomy .... got the bug really bad when I was young and Halley's Comet rolled through in 1983 and then again in 1996 with Hale-Bopp.

Pluto, depending on it's orbit, is anywhere from 30 to 49 AU from the sun (1 AU is roughly 93 million miles). It doesn't help that its orbit is also eccentric and highly inclined compared to the rest of the planets, so the amount of light it gets would be like a night light at 100 feet on a good day.

Of course it doesn't help that it was "officially" discovered in 1930, which means we've known about it only 80 years. This means with a 248 year orbit we've only been able to track it for 1/3 of it's orbit around the sun.

There is no way you can be scientific with information that isn't complete. Reminds me of something else .....

 

Let buy a ticket for Algore and send him to warn everyone on Pluto before its to late. we only have 20 years or we will never be able to save the little planet

 

I had the same thought. I think we can round up a few more helpers to send with big Al. And it would solve the problem of globull climate change right here on earth. Cap and trade bill should not be passed untill we get a report back from our Pluto Pilots. It may be a long wait.

 

Didn't they say Pluto was no longer considered a planet?

 

dwarf planet. Meaning, they dont know.