Scientists have suggested why Pluto emanate x-rays.
American astronomers explained the new data from the spacecraft New Horizons about the unusual radiation of Pluto.
In September 2016 Scott walk with colleagues from the Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysical center in the US unexpectedly and other astrophysicists have discovered that Pluto’s atmosphere in some way yet produces x-ray radiation.
While the environment around Pluto is not conducive to the production of x-rays: a dwarf planet has no measurable magnetic field, its atmosphere is very thin, and Pluto loses the atmosphere at a speed much lower than expected.
“We naively thought that Pluto might lose its atmosphere at the same rate as some of the comet,” says the author of a new study Carey Lisse, a planetary astronomer at the applied physics Laboratory in Maryland.
“We know that comets emit x-rays, so we were hoping that Pluto, the situation is the same. But instead, we found that the culprit is the interaction between the solar wind and the diluted methane,” said Carey Lisse.
Liss and coauthors note that the detected x-ray photons in four separate cases. The energy of the photons, it seems, is not the same as the background x-ray noise. However, to clarify the method of formation of these photons astronomers are waiting for data from x-ray Observatory XMM-Newton satellite of the European space Agency.
