Gallery: Pluto's Flyby Data Finally Enters the Scientific Record
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI01crop-p-color2-enhanced-release-small
Pluto head on and in enhanced color, compiled from blue, red, and infrared images of MVIC.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI02snakeskin-detail
Extended color image of Pluto’s strange “snakeskin”-textured mountains.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI03blue-skies-on-pluto-final-2 horizontal
Like Earth's heavenly hue, Pluto's blue sky is caused by tiny, sunlight-scattering particles in the atmosphere.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI04detail-lorri-rider
Something weird lurks on the basin of Sputnik Planum. New Horizons boss Alan Stern [has an idea](https://twitter.com/AlanStern/status/647129151086788608)…
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI05new-methane-maps-lrg
A map of methane (magenta) on the surface of Pluto.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI06pmap-pmc195-8092-shenk
The most detailed enhanced color map of Pluto yet—made by overlaying color information from MVIC onto a basemap made by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI07nh-apluto-low-haze-9-17-15-updated
Sunset on Pluto! The sun shines through the “fog” near Pluto’s surface. The shadows come from hills and mountains.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI08nh-apluto-wide-9-17-15-final
Just after it whizzed past Pluto, New Horizons took this photo of the dwarf planet backlit by the sun. The image shows mountain ridges and atmospheric haze—lots and lots of layers of atmospheric haze.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated">NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute</a>09SPoW-Sept9-12-04
This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI10charon-9-10-15
Charon's surface indicates a surprisingly complex geological history, including tectonic fracturing and mountainous uplift.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI11Dark-Areas-9-10-15
Scientists are still working out what causes these enigmatic fields of dark, aligned ridges. If they are dunes, that could mean Pluto has wind.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI12Chaos-Region-9-10-15
A large region of jumbled, broken terrain on the northwestern edge of Sputnik Planum (that's the big heart).
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI13Surface-Features-9-10-15
More detail of Pluto's big heart-shaped ice plain, Sputnik Planum.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI14Spherical-Mosaic-9-10-15
This patched-together image of Pluto shows New Horizons' views of the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio below Sputnik Planum's bright, left lobe.
