Pluto orbits on the fringes of our solar system, billions of miles away. Sunlight is much weaker there than it is here on Earth, yet it isn't completely dark. In fact, for just a moment near dawn and dusk each day, the illumination on Earth matches that of noon on Pluto.
Nobody knows exactly what it would look like--that's one reason the New Horizons mission to Pluto is so exciting. But there are a few things we do know. The sun would be about 1,000 times dimmer than it appears on Earth. Instead of a big yellow disc, the sun would look more like other stars, with one big difference: it would still be much, much brighter than anything else in the sky. Pluto has a thin atmosphere that would scatter the light, but probably not enough to make a bright sky like we see on Earth or Mars.
But it wouldn't be completely dark. In fact, if you stood on Pluto at noon you would have enough light to easily read a book. That's in part because your eyes are very good at automatically adjusting to different levels of light. If you had a camera, to get a clear picture of the landscape you'd want to adjust the settings for a longer exposure time or a wider aperture in order to capture as much light as possible. You'd have plenty of time to work on it: one full day on Pluto takes about 153 hours, and because of its axial tilt and very long seasons, parts of Pluto can remain lit for years at a time.
You can see for yourself how much light there is on Pluto. If you go outside on a clear day a few minutes after sunset or a few minutes before sunrise, that's about how much sunlight there is on Pluto at noon.
The New Horizons team has specifically designed and prepared the spacecraft's cameras for the light conditions at Pluto, so they'll be ready to capture whatever the mysterious dwarf planet and its moons have in store.
What else would affect the light on Pluto?
On Earth, the amount of light you see depends on the weather and other atmospheric conditions. We don't know much for sure yet about what kind of weather Pluto might have. One thing you'd definitely notice in Pluto's sky would be its moon Charon. Pluto has five moons (that we know of so far) but Charon is by far the biggest. It's so large compared to Pluto that instead of Charon going around Pluto like our moon goes around the Earth, Pluto and Charon orbit each other like a double planet. Charon is tidally locked in its orbit with Pluto in such a way that it can only be seen from one side of Pluto, similar to the way we can only see one side of our moon from Earth. If you were on that side of Pluto, Charon would sometimes be very bright in the skies overhead.
In fact, when New Horizons flies by in July it will photograph some areas on the night side of Pluto that will be illuminated only by Charon moonshine.
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