Standin’ in the light of your halo

 Standin’ in the light of your halo :

Pluto's hazy, extremely thin atmosphere is captured by our New Horizons spacecraft from 120,000 miles (200,000 km) above the dwarf planet's surface as the spacecraft flew past. Scientists speculate that the haze is a photochemical smog as sunlight and molecules like methane interact, producing complex hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, and scatter sunlight to make the bright blue haze seen in this image.⁣

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Pluto's mountains can be seen in the top left of the first image silhouetted against the atmosphere, creating streaks of light similar to those seen on Earth near dawn and dusk, despite the dwarf planet's distance from the Sun. While Pluto is about 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometers) away from the Sun on average, its atmosphere extends when it nears the Sun and may freeze when it travels farther away. From 1979 to 1999, Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune.⁣

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Image descriptions:⁣

Image 1: The blue arc of Pluto's atmosphere and surface carves through black space from the bottom left to the upper right. At the 11 o'clock position in the image, mountains are visible, creating shadows against the sunlight.⁣

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Image 2: The blue arc continues, stretching from the upper left to the bottom right.⁣

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

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                        04 October 2023