New, very cool Pluto photos

Can we re re define Pluto as a full fledged planet now?

Pluto’s ‘Heart’: Sputnik Planum is the informal name of the smooth, light-bulb shaped 

region on the left of this composite of several New Horizons images of Pluto. The brilliantly

 white upland region to the right may be coated by nitrogen ice that has been transported 

through the atmosphere from the surface of Sputnik Planum, and deposited on these 

uplands. 

Below, this new view of Pluto’s crescent -- taken by New Horizons’ wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on Sept. 13 -- offers an oblique look across Plutonian landscapes with dramatic backlighting from the sun. 

It spectacularly highlights Pluto’s varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across.

Owing to its favorable backlighting and high resolution, this MVIC image also reveals new details of hazes throughout Pluto’s tenuous but extended nitrogen atmosphere. The image shows more than a dozen thin haze layers extending from near the ground to at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. In addition, the image reveals at least one bank of fog-like, low-lying haze illuminated by the setting sun against Pluto’s dark side, raked by shadows from nearby mountains.

"In addition to being visually stunning, these low-lying hazes hint at the weather changing from day to day on Pluto, just like it does here on Earth," said Will Grundy, lead of the New Horizons Composition team from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona.

In the center of this 300-mile (470-kilometer) wide image of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is a large region of jumbled, broken terrain on the northwestern edge of the vast, icy plain informally called Sputnik Planum, to the right. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. This image was taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).

Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Last Updated: Sep. 16, 2015