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The data returned from NASA’s New Horizons reconnaissance of the Pluto system show striking albedo variations from polar to equatorial latitudes as well as sharp longitudinal boundaries. Pluto has a high obliquity (currently 119°) that varies by 23° over a period of less than 3 million years. This variation, combined with its regressing longitude of perihelion (360° over 3.7 million years), creates...
We give an explanatory description of the unusual “climate zones” on Pluto that arise from its high obliquity (mean 115°) and high amplitude (±12°) of obliquity oscillation over a 2.8 million year period. The zones we describe have astronomically defined boundaries and do not incorporate atmospheric circulation. For such a high mean obliquity, the lines of tropics (greatest latitudes where the Sun...
The geology and stratigraphy of the feature on Pluto informally named Sputnik Planitia is documented through geologic mapping at 1:2,000,000 scale. All units that have been mapped are presently being affected to some degree by the action of flowing N2 ice. The N2 ice plains of Sputnik Planitia display no impact craters, and are undergoing constant resurfacing via convection, glacial flow and sublimation...
Since previous long-term insolation modeling in the early 1990s, new atmospheric pressure data, increased computational power, and the upcoming flyby of the Pluto system by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have generated new motivation and increased capabilities for the study of Pluto’s complex long-term (million-years) insolation history. The two primary topics of interest in studying Pluto’s insolation...
The cameras of New Horizons will provide robust data sets that should be imminently amenable to geological analysis of the Pluto system’s landscapes. In this paper, we begin with a brief discussion of the planned observations by the New Horizons cameras that will bear most directly on geological interpretability. Then we broadly review the major geological processes that could potentially operate...
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