<p>NASA's New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic methane snowcapped mountains stretching across a dark expanse on Pluto.<br /><br /></p>.<p>One of Pluto's most identifiable features, Cthulhu Regio stretches nearly halfway around Pluto's equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum.<br /><br />Measuring about 3,000 kilometres long and 750 kilometres wide, Cthulhu is a bit larger than the state of Alaska, NASA said.<br /><br />Cthulhu's appearance is characterised by a dark surface, which scientists think is due to being covered by a layer of dark tholins - complex molecules that form when methane is exposed to sunlight.<br /><br />Cthulhu's geology exhibits a wide variety of landscapes - from mountainous to smooth, and to heavily cratered and fractured, NASA said.<br /><br />Images captured by New Horizons spacecraft show a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that is 420 kilometres long.<br /><br />The range is situated among craters, with narrow valleys separating its peaks. The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red colour of the surrounding plains.<br /><br />Scientists think this bright material could be predominantly methane that has condensed as ice onto the peaks from Pluto's atmosphere.<br /><br />"That this material coats only the upper slopes of the peaks suggests methane ice may act like water in Earth's atmosphere, condensing as frost at high altitude," said John Stansberry, a New Horizons science team member from Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland.<br /><br />Compositional data from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on New Horizons indicates that the location of the bright ice on the mountain peaks correlates almost exactly with the distribution of methane ice.<br /><br />The images were obtained by New Horizons at a range of approximately 33,900 kilometres from Pluto, about 45 minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto on July 14, last year.</p>
<p>NASA's New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic methane snowcapped mountains stretching across a dark expanse on Pluto.<br /><br /></p>.<p>One of Pluto's most identifiable features, Cthulhu Regio stretches nearly halfway around Pluto's equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum.<br /><br />Measuring about 3,000 kilometres long and 750 kilometres wide, Cthulhu is a bit larger than the state of Alaska, NASA said.<br /><br />Cthulhu's appearance is characterised by a dark surface, which scientists think is due to being covered by a layer of dark tholins - complex molecules that form when methane is exposed to sunlight.<br /><br />Cthulhu's geology exhibits a wide variety of landscapes - from mountainous to smooth, and to heavily cratered and fractured, NASA said.<br /><br />Images captured by New Horizons spacecraft show a mountain range located in southeast Cthulhu that is 420 kilometres long.<br /><br />The range is situated among craters, with narrow valleys separating its peaks. The upper slopes of the highest peaks are coated with a bright material that contrasts sharply with the dark red colour of the surrounding plains.<br /><br />Scientists think this bright material could be predominantly methane that has condensed as ice onto the peaks from Pluto's atmosphere.<br /><br />"That this material coats only the upper slopes of the peaks suggests methane ice may act like water in Earth's atmosphere, condensing as frost at high altitude," said John Stansberry, a New Horizons science team member from Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland.<br /><br />Compositional data from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on New Horizons indicates that the location of the bright ice on the mountain peaks correlates almost exactly with the distribution of methane ice.<br /><br />The images were obtained by New Horizons at a range of approximately 33,900 kilometres from Pluto, about 45 minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto on July 14, last year.</p>