Evidence for Crystalline Water and Ammonia Ices on Pluto's Satellite Charon-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Evidence for Crystalline Water and Ammonia Ices on Pluto's Satellite Charon

Published:2000-01-07 Issue:5450 Volume:287 Page:107-109
ISSN:0036-8075
Container-title:Science
language:en
Short-container-title:Science

Author:

Brown Michael E.¹,Calvin Wendy M.²

Affiliation:

1. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

2. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Nevada–Reno, Reno, NV 89557, USA.

Abstract

Observations have resolved the satellite Charon from its parent planet Pluto, giving separate spectra of the two objects from 1.0 to 2.5 micrometers. The spectrum of Charon is found to be different from that of Pluto, with water ice in crystalline form covering most of the surface of the satellite. In addition, an absorption feature in Charon's spectrum suggests the presence of ammonia ices. Ammonia ice–water ice mixtures have been proposed as the cause of flowlike features observed on the surfaces of many icy satellites. The existence of such ices on Charon may indicate geological activity in the satellite's past.

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference32 articles.

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5. Images and spectra of Pluto and Charon were obtained at the Keck telescope with NIRC the facility's near-infrared imaging spectrograph. Images were acquired on 28 May 1999 at 10:20 UT. For imaging a K band filter (covering ∼2 to 2.4 μm) was used; it took two 10-s images with Pluto dithered by 10 arc seconds between the images. Figure 1 shows the difference of the two images. The NIRC pixels are 0.15 arc seconds and the separation of Pluto and Charon at the time of the observations was 0.899 arc seconds or about 6 pixels. The full width at half maximum of the atmospheric turbulence–induced blurring measured from a nearby star immediately before the start of the Pluto observations was 0.30 arc seconds.

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