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See also Just how steep are Pluto's tallest ice mountains?

The Gizmodo article It Looks Like Pluto Has a Liquid Water Ocean shows a large image of Pluto with obliquely lit peaks near both the terminator and the edge of the disk where the topography is really striking.

Four questions, I can split the last one as a separate question if necessary, but it's quite possible a single source is going to contain contain answers to all of them, so let's wait an see.

  1. How tall are these things?
  2. Are they made of ice?
  3. Are they the tallest things on Pluto?
  4. Are these the tallest ice features in the Solar System?

below: Plutonian landscapes in twilight. Image: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI (cropped and half-sized versions, original is almost 3 MB.

Plutonian landscapes in twilight

Plutonian landscapes in twilight

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  1. How tall are these things?
  2. Are they made of ice?
  3. Are they the tallest things on Pluto?
  4. Are these the tallest ice features in the Solar System?

  1. "New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body." https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-icy-mountains-of-pluto

  2. We think so. "Although methane and nitrogen ice covers much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains. Instead, a stiffer material, most likely water-ice, created the peaks. 'At Pluto’s temperatures, water-ice behaves more like rock,' said deputy GGI lead Bill McKinnon of Washington University, St. Louis."

  3. One of them is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzing_Montes

  4. This one I'm not certain about. There's apparent speculation that the ridge around Iapetus is ice (Wiki says the moon's 80% ice, so that's reasonable), and it's substantially taller - 20 kilometers in spots.

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    $\begingroup$ This is excellent! Thank you for taking on the whole thing at once, and sourcing your answer so well. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    May 21, 2019 at 22:32
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh, please mark this one as the answer. $\endgroup$
    – user96931
    May 23, 2019 at 15:00
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    $\begingroup$ @user96931 What's the rush? I usually wait at least a few days, for several reasons, including 1) quick acceptance can discourage other users from taking the time to post an answer with a different perspective and 2) acceptance bumps the post back to the active queue which may give a few more readers the opportunity to see the answer and possibly give the answering users some more up votes. In any event, it's always the OP's prerogative to decide when to accept. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    May 23, 2019 at 15:16
  • $\begingroup$ The Verona Rupes on Miranda would be another candidate for the tallest ice feature. $\endgroup$
    – user31666
    May 28, 2019 at 22:43
  • $\begingroup$ fyi I've just asked Just how steep are Pluto's tallest ice mountains? $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2021 at 3:48

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