Basal Flow on Pluto (IMAGE)

Southwest Research Institute

Basal Flow on Pluto

Caption

Pluto’s northern Sputnik Planitia glacier (in the western or left side of Pluto’s brightheart) is shown here in a color mosaic made from New Horizons imagery. The direction of north is shown on the image.  The image is ~ 700 x 350 kilometers across. The red box has been added to show most of the region containing dark features attributed to the wetting of the glacier by liquid nitrogen sourced from a “basil melting” process beneath the glacier, as described in the published paper by Stern et al. (2026).

Credit

NASA/John Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute

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