Stunning New Color Photos of Pluto Released

This image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by the Ralph color imager aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on April 9 and downlinked to Earth the following day. It is the first color image ever made of the Pluto system by a spacecraft on approach. The image is a preliminary reconstruction, which will be refined later by the New Horizons science team. Clearly visible are both Pluto and the Texas-sized Charon. The image was made from a distance of about 71 million miles (115 million kilometers)—roughly the distance from the Sun to Venus. At this distance, neither Pluto nor Charon is well resolved by the color imager, but their distinctly different appearances can be seen. As New Horizons approaches its flyby of Pluto on July 14, it will deliver color images that eventually show surface features as small as a few miles across. 

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

NASA has released the sharpest images yet of Pluto. What’s more, unlike the usual black-and-white photos of Pluto we’re used to seeing, this latest set reveals Pluto in stunning color.

The photo has been informally named “snakeskin” for its distinct, textured appearance.

“It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology,” said William McKinnon, a member of the NASA team that sent the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto in July, in NASA’s press release. “This’ll really take time to figure out. Maybe it’s some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto’s faint sunlight.”

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