CUAskAnAstronomer

Yes, this is true, but the reflected light would have to be enormously bright to start with, so this is not practical in practice. However, astronomers did just this with Kepler's Supernova and viewed the "light echo" from the original spuernova bouncing off a distant nebula. -Michael

What we expect on Pluto is based on what we've seen on icy moons around the gas giants (especially Triton, which was captured from the Kuiper Belt, the belt of objects of which Pluto is a member), and based on spectroscopy of the surface.

We know Pluto is covered in ices -- both normal water ice, and methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide (all gases at room temperature). We also know it has some kind of red material common to the outer solar system, which is likely complex carbon molecules. Finally, we don't have very good maps of the surface, but we know Pluto has a lot of albedo features -- bright and dark spots -- whcih hints that it'll be pretty interesting.

Craters seem like a safe bet, since it's pretty rare for objects in our Solar System to not have at least some. Given that Pluto's thin atmosphere freezes on the surface each winter, the surface is likely to have some erosion (perhaps not much). Triton has ridges and troughs and plateaus from warm ice cracking and moving both at and below the surface, but Pluto is a smaller moon, so it isn't likely to be as active. I hope it does have some geology beyond craters: ridges seem a good bet, since we see them over a lot of icy moons. Geysers -- places where nitrogen is outgassed -- like Triton's would be amazing, but again, it depends on how warm Pluto is inside (which depends on how much rock it started with; rock has nice radioactive elements that keep planets toasty inside). -- Rebecca

Chapter House is my bar of choice. I've brought about 30 girls to the telescope - all students. No B&E on Sagan's house yet.

-Tyler

All the space. -Rebecca

So usually from the ground you are limited by the Earth's atmosphere. The tubulence in the atmosphere distorts the image and blurs out fine details. However, in the last few decades astronomers have started using something called adaptive optics. Adapative optics is a system whereby the telescope mirror is distorted in real time as you take data. The back of the mirror will have thousands of tiny actuators that flex its surface to focus the light. By focusing on a point source you can effectively eliminate the distortion of the atosphere and recover resolution almost as if you were in space. -Mike