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As I understand, star transits by Pluto helped to better estimate its size before NH. But as you said, it's complicated to get a full spectrographic analisys of
by dr_zoidberg 11y ago
As I understand, star transits by Pluto helped to better estimate its size before NH. But as you said, it's complicated to get a full spectrographic analisys of its atmosphere this way.
Kepler is a mission that mostly works with photometric measurements of planet transits in front of their stars.
- Sharlin 11y agoAnd indeed the fact that the observed transits were "fuzzy" told us that Pluto has a (very tenuous) atmosphere. Indeed, Pluto's diameter had considerable uncertainty before New Horizons arrived due to this (unlike Charon's whose transits were always tack sharp.)