NASA's New Horizons' team has released a new video that suggests that the atmosphere of Pluto has an eerie haze, which now suggests that the dwarf planet's atmosphere is collapsing.
One image sent back, taken from behind Pluto, revealed two distinct layers of haze - one about 50 miles (80km) above the surface and the other about 30 miles (50km) - HNGN reports in another article.
Michael Summers, a member the New Horizons team, said, "We know that Pluto's atmosphere shrank because we've been studying it from ground-based telescopes - watching what happens when the dwarf planet passes in front of a star, and studying how it blocks out the star's light. And now we know more about that atmosphere because images taken by New Horizons show Pluto's silhouette surrounded by a ring of sunlight, revealing a hazy atmosphere reaching out to about 100 miles above the surface," according to Tech Times.
These findings could also mean that the probe was lucky to reach the planet on time and obtain images and data, before the gases completely freeze and fall on its surface.
Ivan Linscott, a researcher at Stanford University and also a part of the New Horizons team, said: "For the first time we have ground truth, measuring the surface pressure at Pluto, giving us an invaluable perspective on conditions at the surface of the planet. This crucial measurement may be telling us that Pluto is undergoing long-anticipated global change," Daily Mail reports.
This discovery also has scientists believing that the observed loss in mass of Pluto these past few years is also caused by its potentially vanishing atmosphere.
