Simultaneously cooling Pluto while energizing atmospheric molecules to allow them to escape into space, Pluto's haze plays a ...

In the wake of New Horizons' observations of Pluto, Zhang published a paper in 2017 that hypothesized that Pluto's atmosphere was dominated by haze particles, which would've made it completely ...

The haze particles that dominate Pluto’s atmosphere—such as nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide—control the atmosphere’s energy balance as the particles are heated and cooled. This phenomenon, ...

JWST finally detects radiation from Pluto that conclusively determines that Pluto's haze indeed impacts its climate.

More information: Tanguy Bertrand et al, Evidence of haze control of Pluto's atmospheric heat balance from JWST/MIRI thermal light curves, Nature Astronomy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02573-z ...

JWST confirms Pluto’s haze cools its mesosphere and drives methane escape, coating Charon’s poles red. The haze absorbs UV ...

JWST has confirmed Pluto’s bizarre atmospheric behavior and its ghostly interaction with Charon. These findings could reshape ...

New data captured by the James Webb Space Telescope has finally given astronomers new clues about how Pluto cools itself.

The haze in Pluto’s atmosphere was indeed radiating heat, just as the theory suggested it would. But these findings tell us more than how Pluto cools itself.

Pluto was turning out to be not just a frozen ball, but a body much more complex than most scientists had suspected. By that time, a revolution was under way that would reshape astronomers’ ...

Until 2015, Pluto, the former ninth planet of the classical solar system, was largely a mystery—a tiny speck 3.6 billion miles from the sun. When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrived at the ...