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The geology of Pluto consists of the characteristics of the surface, crust, and interior of Pluto. Because of Pluto's distance from Earth, in-depth study from Earth is difficult. Many details about Pluto remained unknown until 14 July 2015, when New Horizons flew through the Pluto system and began transmitting data back to Earth. [1]
A map of Pluto showing the names officially approved by the IAU as of 12 February 2025, along with many informal names in bold and italics. This is a list of named geological features on Pluto, identified by scientists working with data from the New Horizons spacecraft.
The lack of craters in the region suggests that its surface is less than 100 million years old, hence the speculation that Pluto is probably geologically active. [8] Subsequent data indicated that features near the western edges of the region (an area about the size of Texas ) show evidence of "exotic ice flow", similar to melting glaciers ...
Dorothy is the largest known impact basin on Pluto's moon Charon.The crater was discovered by the New Horizons space probe in 2015 during its flyby of Pluto and its moons. It was named after Dorothy Gale from the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; the name was officially approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on 11 April 2018. [1]
NASA has released a map of Pluto's surface made from images recently taken by the New Horizons probe and it includes some quite mysterious features. Particularly notable is the lightened area ...
Models of Pluto's climate indicate that Burney likely experiences downward-flowing katabatic winds. [12] Burney is surrounded by a broad region to the northwest of Sputnik Planitia that hosts a type of terrain informally called washboard terrain. This terrain is characterized by parallel ridges spaced 1–2 kilometres (0.62–1.24 miles) apart ...
Pluto, along with many other dwarf planets in the outer solar system, is often thought of as dark, icy and barren – with a surface temperature of just −230°C. But now a new study, published ...
It is about half the diameter and an eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in a frigid region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond the most distant planet Neptune.