Piccard Mons is a large, roughly circular mountain and likely cryovolcano on the dwarf planet Pluto. Discovered by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, it is located southeast of Wright Mons within the Tombaugh Regio, adjacent to the Safronov Regio and Elcano Montes.
Discovery and naming
On 14 July 2015, the
New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby of the
Pluto and its system of moons, resolving surface features on Pluto for the first time. Piccard Mons was soon after informally named by the
New Horizons team after Swiss balloonist and physicist
Auguste Piccard. On 30May 2019,
Piccard Mons was approved as the official name of the feature by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Piccard Mons is believed to be the tallest
cryovolcano on Pluto with an estimated height of 7 km (4.2 mi)
Challenges
By the time the
New Horizons spacecraft was conducting its highest-resolution observations, the mountain was in darkness, having rotated past Pluto's terminator. Although some images were able to be taken past the line of darkness using sunlight reflected by Pluto's atmospheric haze layers, much less can be told about it than neighboring sunlit regions.
Geography
Piccard Mons is at one of the southernmost points on Pluto. It is located in the southeastern part of the
Tombaugh Regio and is west of the
Safronov Regio. It is to the southeast of the
Wright Mons and Hyecho Palus.
Structure and geology
Piccard Mons is not made of rock like many other volcanoes in the Solar System, but a combination of
ammonia,
methane,
carbon monoxide,
ice, and
nitrogen, all in solid form. Additionally, it is believed that Piccard Mons is made up of additional materials that are stronger than
Solid nitrogen.
Near Piccard Mons and the surrounding area, there is a hummocky terrain which means that there are consistent hills in the area. Very little is known about these hilly areas, but they do not seem to have been formed by erosion or continuous melting and freezing.
Cryovolcanism
It is believed that Piccard Mons is an
cryovolcano rather than explosive.
This means that there was a low-viscosity fluid known as cryomagma that flowed down the mountain.
Before the discovery of Piccard Mons, it was believed that Pluto didn't have enough residual heat to cause volcanic eruptions, but with the evidence of the volcano having recently erupted, it is believed that there may have been enough radioactive material in the core of Pluto to cause such an eruption.
See also
-
List of geological features on Pluto
-
List of tallest mountains in the Solar System
