Scientists posted high-resolution images of Pluto’s landscape online this week. The images show that the dwarf planet is complex. There appear to be huge icebergs, but the researchers are not entirely sure.
The images are of high resolution, with each pixel being equivalent to a distance of approximately four hundred meters. The American Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has put them online. That research institute is connected to NASA.
The photos show that Pluto’s landscape is quite complex. For example, scientists think the giant mountains are made of ice, but they don’t know for sure. Some mountains are located near the so-called Sputnik Planum. That is an area the size of the US state of Texas. Nitrogen ice probably also flows in that area.
Interestingly, the images also show an area with the most craters New Horizons observed. Next to it is a piece of land where, on the other hand, there are hardly any craters. In this last area, probably the youngest, you can probably see dunes. They are pitch black in the pictures.
Finally, the photos paint a picture of Pluto’s moons Charon, Nix and Hydra. They also show a special and visible twilight near the dwarf planet. All in all, every part of Pluto’s landscape is “as complex as that of Mars,” the researchers say.
New Horizons has long since left Pluto behind and is on its way to an object in the Kuiper Belt. The spacecraft is now 69 million kilometers from Pluto, or more than 5 billion kilometers from Earth. It will take until the end of next year for all the radio signals from the images of Pluto stored by New Horizons to arrive.
Want to see more images of Pluto? NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory regularly post new photos online on a separate themed page.