When the New Horizons spacecraft swept past Pluto and Charon in 2015, it revealed two amazingly complex worlds and an active atmosphere on Pluto. Those snapshots redefined our understanding of the system.

Now, new observations using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) taken in 2022 and 2023, show that Pluto's atmosphere is completely different from any other one in the Solar System.

For one thing, it contains haze particles that rise and fall as they are heated and cooled.

Pluto's atmosphere is a complicated haze of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. Based on the JWST data, the haze particles control the energy balance of the atmosphere as they heat up and cool off. That's very unusual and hasn't been seen in other solar system worlds.

The observations were inspired by an idea a

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