on the periphery of the solar system there is a little world Bound by toxic ice lurking amid the great abyss of space a Giant Shadow covering the stars from sight is unmovable over its rugged Horizon and the dim sun slowly traverses the sky the sun rays here are not able to dissipate the semi darkness that the Frozen plain wrinkled with bottomless crevices is perpetually shr cred in this is Pluto a lifeless Kingdom of rock and dice covered by Perpetual Shadow let's find out more about [Music] it Pluto is about 40 astronomical units away from the
Sun and is a dark and distinguishable object this distant Celestial body follows a rather elongated orbit around the center of the solar system completing it every 248 Earth years we know that Pluto's radius is 1,188 KM which means that it is noticeably inferior in size not only to all the planets of the solar system but also to some of their satellites including the moon at the same time observations of the celestial body's proper motion made it possible to calculate its mass with a high degree of accuracy it turned out to be small only 1.3 *
10 ^ of 22 kg or 18% of the lunar Mass it is easy to see that Pluto is much more similar to small celestial bodies such as Aris cies or sedna in terms of its characteristics this is the reason why dropped the list of dwarf planets in 2006 due to its long and elongated trajectory Pluto has a long orbital cycle only in 1989 did the planetoid first pass its orbit perhelion since its Discovery approaching the Sun as close as 29.7 astronomical units since then this distance has been continuously increasing and will reach its greatest value
in the year 213 by that time the dwarf planet will be near its aelion which is 49.3 astronomical units away from the center of our system thus Pluto is a very distant and dim space object that is the reason why it cannot be seen from Earth with a naked eye and even in images from the hubo Space Telescope the dwarf planet looks like a murky Brown disc without any surface details of course in such conditions it is almost impossible to study the celestial body properly to solve this problem the New Horizon's UNM orbital station was
sent to Pluto in 2006 it took a long 9 and a half years to reach its destination on its way it beamed back to us detailed images of Jupiter it wasn't until 2015 the spacecraft finally reached the main object of its Mission as it flew past Pluto the station made about 400 observations collecting more than 6 GB of information and it took more than a year to transmit this large amount of data to Earth unfortunately the probe's trajectory did not allow photographing the entire surface of the dwarf planet the fact is that New Horizons did
not enter into an orbit around Pluto but Circle drowned Pluto in order to be able to explore other space objects before before moving on to the celestial body's terrain features we need to understand its internal structure according to the currently accepted model Pluto has a massive core with a diameter of about 1,700 km consisting of a mixture of various forms of water ice and rocks in its Center it is surrounded by a 300 km ice mantle there are probably tectonic processes running in the mantle and in the moment they're quite understudied the mantle in its
turn is covered by crust which is a mixture of crystallized Gases such as nitrogen methane and carbon monoxide According to some assumptions Pluto's core May generate enough heat to melt some of the icy mantle in this case deep beneath the surface of the planeti there should hide a very salty and toxic ocean containing large amounts of dissolved ammonia as for the surface temperature of the dwarf planet it is very low and is not over 60 kin or 213° C below 0 our journey around Pluto will start at the most outstanding and well studied feature of
its relief tomow Regio this vast area is located in the equatorial zone of the planetoid and is shaped like a heart sketch this resemblance and the region its informal nickname the heart its size reaches 2,000 300 km which means that the plane occupies about a quarter of the celestial body's entire area tomow regio's surface is not homogeneous thus there is a smooth and Light plane in its western part known as Sputnik plena whose diameter measures 1,492 km an elevation map will reveal this region to be a vast lowland area it is covered with a thick
layer of nitrogen ice as well as carbon monoxide and solid methane these substances have a light coloring which makes some parts of the plane reflect up to 90% of the light falling on them there are also virtually no craters which means that the region is very young in geological terms according to the main hypothesis Sputnik plena formed about 100 million years ago when Pluto experienced a collision with a large Celestial body as a result a huge impact crater appeared it was filled with contents of the hypothetical inner ocean of the dwarf planet which rapidly froze
there some typical features of the relief of the plane can serve as evidence of this for example there are quite a number of smooth surface areas on it ranging from 20 to 30 km in size with hills and depressions concentrated on the borders between them this kind of structure resembles convection cells which appear in any fluid heated from below this may serve as an indirect confirmation of the hypothesis of Pluto's warm interior tomow Regio is surrounded by comparatively high mountain ridges thus Hillary Mones lying to the west from Sputnik plena reach 3 and2 km in
height taning Mones are located in the southern part of the heart some of them Tower as high as over 6 km above the dwarf planet's average surface level which makes this Ridge the tallest one found on Pluto remarkably these rocks are likely to be made up mostly of water ice and in temperatures as low as here on Pluto water ice is as solid as rock moving a little further south we can see a deep Basin surrounded by Massive M layered Ridges of ice and rock it is assumed that it may be the vent of an
ancient cryo volcano and the rock around it is its numerous Frozen eruptions their chemical composition is of great interest to science because once it is known the peculiarities of Pluto in a makeup may be studied the eastern part of tomow Regio is darker in addition its surface is pockmarked with a great number of craters which means that this region is by far older than Sputnik plena moving further east along the Equator we will see a chain of dark spots hundreds of kilom in diameter these objects are called macular and are named after dark deities of
various couches for example one of them is named balog together they form a giant structure called the brass knuckles encompassing the celestial body along the Equator the macular are separated by high mountain ranges and their surface is cut by Deep crevices reaching hundreds of kilometers in length cthul maula stretches to the West W from tomow Regio it is the largest dark spot on Pluto measuring almost 3,000 km its surface reflects not more than 30% of the light shed on it which is a stark contrast with a bright and light Sputnik plena close by there is
still no reliable information about what macular are it is assumed that their dark color is due to a high content of tholins combined with a relatively large concentration of impact craters this indicates that maculas are remarkably old it is also known that the surface of cthulu macula is heterogeneous thus its relief in the western part is undulating the central part is a smooth plane and the eastern part is covered with mountains and craters leaving the Grim spot of cthulu maula behind us let's head north here lies Lowell Regio the vast Valley surrounding Pluto's North Pole
surprisingly it is this place that is currently the most illuminated part of the celestial body's surface the point is that Pluto's axis of rotation has a very large tilt with respect to the plane of its orbit so in its movement it found itself facing the sun with its North Pole it is assumed that it's for this reason that the density of Pluto's atmosphere is tripled over the past 30 years despite the growing distance from the Sun it is likely that the sun's Rays evaporate nitrogen ice settled at the pole which goes into the dwarf planet's
atmosphere in its orbital motion Pluto has a number of peculiarities compared to the planets of the solar system in addition to the fact that its orbit has a noticeable tilt to the ecliptic plane the planetoid itself constantly performs cyclic oscillations near a certain point this is due to the presence of a large satellite gravitationally affecting the dwarf planet it is called Sharon and its mass is 1.52 * 10 the^ of 21 kg which is more than 11% the mass of Pluto itself as a consequence both celestial bodies orbit a common Mass center between them they're
tidily locked to each other so they face each other with the same sides at all times unlike Pluto's the surface of its satellite is noticeably darker and shows an abundance of water ice which is mixed with methane and nitrogen only in some regions in addition to Sharon there are several other satellites but all of them are much smaller and are irregular in shape NYX and Hydra discovered in 2005 measure several tens of kilm and curus and sticks which were discovered later are not over 16 km in diameter all of these celestial bodies consist mainly of
water ice and and were probably captured by Pluto's Gravity from the Kyper belt unfortunately a significant part of Sharon was not caught in the field of view of the New Horizon's probes cameras but many curious terrain features can be found on the visible surface of the celestial body for example to the south of the Equator there lies a vast region called Vulcan Plum its area is not known precisely but it is not less than 400,000 square km which is is comparable with the size of an average European country here the highest Summit of Sharon can
be found kurim its diameter measures around 40 km and according to some estimates its height reaches 4,000 m in addition the mountain is surrounded by a wide circular moat as it were up to 2 km deep According to some assumptions kubric mons May in fact be a cryo volcano in this case it is very likely the the area around it has sunk under its own weight due to the Ting of the underground reservoir to the north stretches the vast Oz Terror the surface of which is pockmarked with many craters it is separated from vcan Plum
by a system of giant Ledges and crevices with a total height of about a kilometer the largest of them is Serenity kasma which is 200 km long with the width varying from 40 to 50 km it can be as deep as 7 km and it is difficult to explore its bottom because of the thick Shadows cast by the steep slopes further north yet near the very pole there is the giant Mordor macula its diameter reaches 475 km and its origin is still debatable according to the dominant hypothesis today nitrogen and methane floating from Pluto's atmosphere
were trapped by Sharon's gravity and so settled at its poles after exposure to ultraviolet radiation they turned into tholin and gradually concentrated in the ice of the celestial body this assumption needs verification which will be an object of future missions Sharon largely remains a mystery to us because its research is only just starting although the Pluto Sharon system is undoubtedly one of the most interesting structures in the solar system it is still understudied unfortunately the New Horizon's probe left its environs long ago and the celestial bodies themselves are rapidly moving away from us taking their
secrets along at the moment the probe is more than 50 astronomical units away from the earth and from time to time beams back to us some extremely important data by about 2030 all of its systems will eventually fail and the probe will be left all alone in the chilling recess es of [Music] space dear friends we're currently not uploading new videos on our Channel as often as we' prefer their production requires more and more time and effort because we want to improve and make worthy videos of the highest quality your support is the main motivation
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