“Who would expect a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt [region where is located the dwarf planet]? It is magnificent,” he said, quoted in a statement from NASA, Alan Stern, principal investigator of the mission “New Horizons”, the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, United States.
The particles that make up the Pluto haze layers are in themselves, gray and red, but the way they spread blue light caught the attention of the team of scientists from NASA operated mission.
Usually, according to Carly Howett, another researcher at the Southwest Research Institute, “a blue sky often results from the scattering of sunlight by tiny particles.”
On Earth, recalled, “these particles are tiny nitrogen molecules.” Pluto, he added, “appear to be larger, but still relatively small, like soot particles, which are called tolinas.”
Scientists believe that these particles gain height in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet radiation Sun ionizes (separates) nitrogen molecules and methane and allows them to react with each other to form more and more complex ions.
When they recombine, they form complex macromolecules, a process that refers to note NASA, was first identified in the upper atmosphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.
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