WASHINGTON: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned new close-up images of Pluto to the Earth that show an amazing range of features on the planet’s surface and in its atmosphere.
The incredible images reveal a bewildering variety of surface features that have scientists reeling because of their range and complexity, says NASA in a release.
“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern
“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.”
These are first from New Horizons year-long download of high resolution images. New Horizons began its year-long download of new images and other data over the Labor Day weekend.
According to NASA, images downlinked in the past few days have more than doubled the amount of Pluto’s surface seen at resolutions as good as 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel.
They reveal new features as diverse as possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows that apparently oozed out of mountainous regions onto plains, and even networks of valleys that may have been carved by material flowing over Pluto’s surface.
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