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NASA Pluto pictures reveal dwarf planet's diverse landscape

Newest images from New Horizons spacecraft show features that could be dunes, mountains or blocks of ice floating in a sea of frozen nitrogen

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.
This synthetic perspective view of Pluto, based on the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft Credit: Photo: NASA

Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July, becoming the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

Two different versions of an image of Pluto's haze layers, taken by New Horizons as it looked back at Pluto's dark side nearly 16 hours after close approach, from a distance of 480,000 miles (770,000 kilometers), at a phase angle of 166 degrees. Pluto's north is at the top, and the sun illuminates Pluto from the upper right.
Two different versions of an image of Pluto's haze layers, taken by New Horizons as it looked back at Pluto's dark side nearly 16 hours after close approach

"If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top - but that's what is actually there," said Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal scientist from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains. Dark ridges also are visible that some scientists speculate might be dunes.

This 220-mile (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet.
This 220-mile (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet.

One outer solar-system geologist, William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, said if the ridges are, in fact, dunes, that would be "completely wild" given Pluto's thin atmosphere.

"Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven't figured out is at work. It's a head-scratcher," McKinnon said in a written statement.

The jumble of mountains, on the other hand, may be huge blocks of ice floating in a softer, vast deposit of frozen nitrogen.

Mosaic of high-resolution images of Pluto, sent back from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. The image is dominated by the informally-named icy plain Sputnik Planum, the smooth, bright region across the center. This image also features a tremendous variety of other landscapes surrounding Sputnik. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size, and the mosaic covers a region roughly 1,000 miles (1600 kilometers) wide.
Mosaic of high-resolution images of Pluto, sent back from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

After several weeks of collecting engineering data from New Horizons, scientists started getting fresh Pluto pictures last weekend. The latest images were released on Thursday.

Besides geologic features, the images show that the atmospheric haze surrounding Pluto has multiple layers. What's more, the haze crates a twilight effect that enables New Horizons to study places on the night side that scientists never expected to see.

This image of Pluto's largest moon Charon, taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft
This image of Pluto's largest moon Charon, taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft

Monday marks two months from New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto on July 14, following a journey from Cape Canaveral, Florida, spanning 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometres) and 9½ years. As of Friday, the spacecraft was 44 million miles (71 million kilometres) past Pluto.

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.
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.

So much data were collected during the Pluto flyby that it will take until next autumn to retrieve it all here on Earth. The spacecraft is operated from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which also designed and built it.

New Horizons' next target, pending formal approval by NASA, will be a much smaller object that orbits 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometres) beyond Pluto. It, too, lies in the so-called Kuiper Belt, a frigid twilight zone on the outskirts of our solar system. Following a set of maneuvers, New Horizons would reach PT1 - short for Potential Target 1 - in 2019.