First Stellar Occultations Shed Additional Light on Pluto's Atmosphere

First Stellar Occultations Shed Additional Light on Pluto's Atmosphere Laurel MD (SPX) May 20, 2016 - Scientists on NASA's New Horizons team say the spacecraft succeeded in observing the first occultations of Pluto's atmosphere by ultraviolet stars, an important goal of the mission's Pluto encounter. These data, stored on New Horizons' digital recorders since last summer's encounter and recently transmitted to Earth, confirm several major findings about Pluto's atmosphere. Approximately fo ... more

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