New photos of Pluto released by Nasa reveal nitrogen ice flows filling up craters, an atmosphere that could be on the verge of collapse, and a mysterious reddish haze extending 100 miles above the surface.

Scientists of the space agency’s historic New Horizons mission on Friday announced the discoveries with visible delight, with lead investigator Alan Stern declaring the Pluto system a “scientific wonderland”.

In a new set of high-resolution images of the dwarf planet’s surface, Stern and researcher Bill McKinnon showed evidence of nitrogen ice flows moving and spreading through a vast plain near the edge of Pluto’s large, heart-shaped region.

McKinnon pointed out “a pattern that indicates the flow of viscous ice” that appears to move “just like glacial flow on the Earth”. While water ice on Pluto freezes to the point of immovable bedrock, nitrogen and methane ice are “soft and malleable”, he said.
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McKinnon also showed off a new ice mountain range, named Hillary Montes after Mt Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, and “the very ancient, heavily cratered region informally called Cthulhu”, after HP Lovecraft’s fictional monster god.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/24/pluto-nitrogen-ice-flows-atmosphere-collapse-red-haze