WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have detected another exotic feature on one of the solar system's most wondrous worlds, a large field of dunes on the surface of the distant, frigid dwarf planet Pluto apparently composed of wind-swept, sand-sized grains of frozen methane.
The dunes, spotted on images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 flyby, sit at the boundary between a heart-shaped nitrogen glacier about the size of France called Sputnik Planitia and the Al Idrisi Montes mountain range made of frozen water, scientists said on Thursday.