Pluto changes color

A series of new photos sent back to Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope showed the color of Pluto changing and the ice blocks on its surface moving.

Photograph of Pluto by Hubble telescope from 2002 to 2003. Photo: AP.

AP said, US Aerospace Agency (NASA) published photos yesterday. They show that the surface of Pluto is much redder than many decades ago. If you look with the naked eye, the dwarf planet is yellow orange, but astronomers claim that the red color has increased by about 20% compared to before.

Based on the photos, scientists believe that the freezing nitrogen on the surface of Pluto is rising in the northern hemisphere, making the area brighter. Nitrogen decreases again in the southern hemisphere, making it darker. Changes on the surface of Pluto are quite large and happen faster than any other celestial body in the solar system. This is an unusual phenomenon because a season lasts 120 years in some areas of the dwarf planet.

"We were surprised that the changes were so big and very fast," said astronomer Marc Buie of the US Southwest Research Institute.

From 1954 to 2000, Pluto did not change color in photographs taken from the earth. But then its color began to change, with red rising from 20 to 30% between 2000 and 2002. However, according to Buie, its red color is not as strong as Mars.

Buie said he could explain the rise of red, but could not understand why the change happened so quickly in recent times. Pluto has a lot of methane - made up of carbon (C) and hydrogen (H). The amount of H atoms is losing because of the solar wind and many other factors, leaving areas of rich C atoms on the surface. The abundance of C atoms makes the surface of the dwarf planet red and dark.

Hubble telescope captures images from 2002 and analyzes them for several years. One of the difficulties in analyzing is that Pluto takes 248 years to rotate one round of the sun. Because the astronomical world cannot know the status of the dwarf planet when it is located farthest from the sun.

Unlike Earth, the 4 seasons on Pluto have uneven lengths.