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user-inactivated  ·  3203 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pluto has a tail!

Correct. Then Hubble started to take imagry of Pluto showing that it had more of an atmosphere than it should have. The problem with that is that there is no, at least no known, way to pump energy into Pluto like there is with Europa, Enceladus, Titan, even the earth. So, where does the "air" come from?

the thing that has me shocked is that I was expecting a body like Ceres with a bit of Triton mixed in. But as we know, the joy of looking at something completely new is that you get a whole series of questions that you did not know about prior.

Why are there big dark spots on the side of Pluto facing Charon? What is that giant flat, smooth area that looks like a Heart? WHY ARE THERE NO CRATERS? I mean, wow, NO CRATERS! not even any big ones! If there was a giant impactor that split the proto-Pluto into the current Pluto system, should there not be some scars from that? Why is the atmosphere of Pluto bigger than expected? Pluto has ice caps! ICE CAPS! What is that giant dark spot on Charon's pole area?

It is going to take 20 months to get all this data back to earth, then it is going to take a year minimum to figure out what the heck we are looking at. So at least a half-decade of questions and hopefully answers about this place. My big BIG hope is that Pluto is so weird that it fuels the desire for the Neptune Orbiter; Triton is about the same size as Pluto and we think it is a captured Plutino object. I doubt we will go back to Pluto anytime in my lifetime and an orbiter will take 20 years to get there anyway so what we have now is all we are going to get. But Neptune is doable in the near future.

TLDR: Space is awesome.