What is the atmosphere of Pluto?

Answer 1

Pluto has orbited close to Earth and the sun during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While Pluto is this close to the sun, some nitrogen with small amounts of carbon monoxide and methane that were frozen on its surface have warmed enough to become gaseous, forming a thin atmosphere. Much of Pluto's atmosphere is expected to freeze and collapse once again as it moves away from the sun over the next 10 to 15 years. The complete orbit of Pluto takes almost 250 years, and during most of this time the atmosphere is thought to be almost non-existant. Wikipedia has some additional information and a link is provided.

Answer 2

The weather on Pluto is very cold! It doesn't rain cause it will freeze.. Pluto hasn't been observed lately it wont be observed until 2015 when "New Horizons" arrives
The weather is very cold.It is not windy. You do not feal any wind at all, but it is very cold.pluto is about negative 400 degrees.

Answer 3

To put it simply it probably has a very thin envelope of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide gases, these probably come from the ices that form on the surface.

Pluto's atmosphere is roughly 90% Nitrogen, and 10% other complex molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide. The composition of Pluto's atmosphere is very similar to the Earth's which is also 80% Nitrogen.

Its surface pressure ranges from 6.5 to 24 μbar.

Pluto's elongated orbit is predicted to have a major effect on its atmosphere: as Pluto moves away from the Sun, its atmosphere should gradually freeze out, and fall to the ground. When Pluto is closer to the Sun, the temperature of Pluto's solid surface increases, causing the ices to sublimate into gas. This creates an anti-greenhouse effect; much as sweat cools the body as it evaporates from the surface of the skin, this sublimation cools the surface of Pluto. Scientists using the Submillimeter Array have recently discovered that Pluto's temperature is about 43 K (−230 °C), 10 K colder than would otherwise be expected.

The presence of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in Pluto's atmosphere creates a temperature inversion, with average temperatures 36 K warmer 10 km above the surface. The lower atmosphere contains a higher concentration of methane than its upper atmosphere.

The first evidence of Pluto's atmosphere was found by the Kuiper Airborne Observatory in 1985, from observations of the occultation of a star behind Pluto. When an object with no atmosphere moves in front of a star, the star abruptly disappears; in the case of Pluto, the star dimmed out gradually. From the rate of dimming, the atmospheric pressure was determined to be 0.15 pascal, roughly 1/700,000 that of Earth. The conclusion was confirmed and significantly strengthened by extensive observations of another similar occultation in 1988.

In 2002, another occultation of a star by Pluto was observed and analysed by teams led by Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory, James L. Elliot of MIT, and Jay Pasachoff of Williams College.

Surprisingly, the atmospheric pressure was estimated to be 0.3 pascal, even though Pluto was farther from the Sun than in 1988 and thus should have been colder and had a more rarefied atmosphere. One explanation for the discrepancy is that in 1987 the south pole of Pluto came out of shadow for the first time in 120 years, causing extra nitrogen to sublimate from the polar cap. It will take decades for the excess nitrogen to condense out of the atmosphere as it freezes onto the north pole's now permanently dark ice cap.

Spikes in the data from the same study revealed what may be the first evidence of wind in Pluto's atmosphere.Another stellar occultation was observed by the MIT-Williams College team of James Elliot, Jay Pasachoff, and a Southwest Research Institute team led by Leslie Young on June 12, 2006 from sites in Australia.

In October 2006, Dale Cruikshank of NASA/Ames Research Center (a New Horizons co-investigator) and his colleagues announced the spectroscopic discovery of ethane on Pluto's surface. This ethane is produced from the photolysis or radiolysis (i.e., the chemical conversion driven by sunlight and charged particles) of frozen methane on Pluto's surface and suspended in its atmosphere.

Answer 4

plutos atmosphere is made of a thin layer of carbon monoxide,methane and nitrogen. it is derived from the frozen surface of the planet...interestingly when the planet moves away from the sun the atmosphere freezes out and settles on the surface ....this is called the green house effect......

Answer 5

Nobody has ever been beyond Earth's orbit, so we can only speculate. Life on Pluto would require people to live inside a habitat. They would also have to solve the problem of very low gravity.

Answer 6

Pluto has a thin atmosphere composed mainly of nitrogen, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. It extends to about 1,600 km above the surface and is much less dense than Earth's atmosphere. The atmosphere on Pluto varies with its distance from the sun due to its elliptical orbit.

Answer 7

The climate is around -230 degrees celsius

Answer 8

Very icy and cold since the sun does not reach it

Answer 9

Its all ice. Ice and cold rock.