New Horizons Finally Beams Back New Images of Pluto! Stunning, Varied Features

First Posted: Sep 11, 2015 06:54 AM EDT

Scientists have now received the newest images of Pluto from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. The new close-up images reveal a bewildering variety of surface features that show just how complex the tiny dwarf planet is.

"Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system," said Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator, in a news release. "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."

New Horizons began its yearlong download of new images and other data of Pluto over the Labor Day weekend. Images that have been beamed back have more than doubled the amount of Pluto's surface seen at resolutions as good as 440 yards per pixel. They reveal new features as diverse as possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows and even networks of valleys that may have been carved by material flowing over Pluto's surface.

"The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars," said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and imaging (GGI) team. "The randomly jumped mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice flowing within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum."

The images also show the most heavily cratered and oldest terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains. There might even be a field of dark, wind-blown dunes.

The findings reveal a bit more about this tiny planet, and show that it's far more complex than once expected. As new images continue to be received, scientists will learn even more about the icy world.

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TagsNew Horizons, pluto, NASA, NASA’s, Planet, Solar System, Images, Image, Geology