FROST has been seen vaporising on Pluto for the first time, though the pictures of it were taken in the 1930s, soon after the dwarf planet was discovered.
A team led by Bradley Schaefer from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge measured Pluto’s brightness on 32 photographic plates taken at US observatories in 1933 and 1934. Using modern techniques, the team was able to measure Pluto’s brightness far more accurately than at the time.
Comparing the results with observations from the early 1950s, the team showed that Pluto darkened by about 5 per cent in the intervening years. The results…
