Weather on Pluto

A distant ice world where nitrogen glaciers slowly flow across the plains.

Orbital Telemetry Live

Pluto

-225°C

Diurnal Temperature Swing 🌡️

-225°C Avg

Day Peak: -218°C | Night Low: -232°C

Atmosphere & Pressure 💨

10 to 20 microbars (100,000 times less than Earth)

A thin nitrogen haze that expands when close to the Sun and freezes onto the ground when far away.

Supersonic Winds & Storms 🌪️

Gentle breezes drifting across vast plains of frozen nitrogen.

Sublimation weather where nitrogen ice turns straight into vapor, creating hazy ice clouds.

Mission Data Provenance 🛰️

Close Flyby Optical Telemetry

High-resolution flyby telemetry and color imaging from NASA's New Horizons probe.

Complex things. Made simple.

What would it feel like to experience the weather on Pluto?

Pluto has a giant heart-shaped glacier made of frozen nitrogen (Sputnik Planitia). When Pluto swings closer to the Sun in its oval orbit, the surface ice warms into a hazy sky; as it pulls away, the sky freezes and falls back down like snow.

Distance from Sun / Earth

4.3 – 7.5 billion km from Earth

Solar Rotation / Day Cycle

153.3 Hours

Primary Atmosphere

A thin nitrogen haze that expands when close to the Sun and freezes onto the ground when far away

3D Orbital Mesh

Procedural Procedural Mesh

Frequently Asked Questions About Pluto

Verified science answered in plain, accessible language.

The famous heart-shaped region is Tombaugh Regio. Its western lobe, Sputnik Planitia, is a 1,000-km-wide basin filled with actively churning nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide ice.

Yes. When Pluto's eccentric orbit takes it further from the Sun, its tenuous nitrogen atmosphere cools and freezes out directly onto the surface as volatile snow.

Pluto averages -225°C (-373°F), just 48 Kelvin above absolute zero. At night, surface valleys plunge below -232°C.