Pluto and Charon shine in most detailed topographical maps ever Pluto's atmosphere gets its blue haze from icy organic compounds, study suggests (That's the theory, anyway, since scientists have only gotten a good look at the north pole.) The methane gas in the exosphere migrates to the hemisphere experiencing autumn, where it refreezes. Methane frozen at the pole in the hemisphere experiencing spring rapidly sublimates, creating a short-lived exosphere. Those conditions change around the time of Pluto's equinox, which most recently occurred in 1988 to 1989.ĭuring the equinox period, Charon experiences a surge of activity that lasts just four Earth years, with the moon's surface warming to minus 406 F (minus 243 C). During this time, Charon's surface temperatures linger as low as minus 433 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 258 degrees Celsius). They found that Charon's atmosphere is inactive for centuries as Pluto and its five moons laboriously continue on their long orbit around the sun. In experiments at SwRI's Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and Space Science Experiments, scientists recreated the surface conditions on Charon, such as its ability to trap methane on its surface, and methane’s sublimation rate when warmed, and then plugged their results into a dynamic model describing Charon's thin methane atmosphere, or exosphere. "Our findings indicate that drastic seasonal surges in Charon's thin atmosphere, as well as light breaking down the condensing methane frost, are key to understanding the origins of Charon's red polar zone," SwRI's Ujjwal Raut, a planetary scientist and lead author of one of the new papers describing the new findings, said in a statement.
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