The Icy World Of Wonder: Mind Blowing Images And Science Findings Revealed Today

In a much anticipated event, the New Horizons science team released new images of Pluto and science findings today. Among the most amazing images is a hauntingly beautiful image of a luminous atmospheric halo around Pluto taken by New Horizons on July 15, when the spacecraft was behind Pluto. The science team calls it a "breathtaking farewell to New Horizons". The latest images also found evidence of exotic ices flowing across Pluto's surface. The media briefing was carried live on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT.

Below are the images that were released along with captions. We will write follow up articles over the next few days to provide more details about each new image and findings.

Pluto sends a breathtaking farewell to New Horizons. Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across. The image, delivered to Earth on July 23, is displayed with north at the top of the frame. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette in this image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Hydrocarbon hazes in the atmosphere, extending as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) above the surface, are seen for the first time in this image, which was taken on July 14. New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager captured this view about seven hours after the craft’s closest approach, at distance of about 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) from Pluto. Inset: False-color image of hazes reveals a variety of structures, including two distinct layers, one at 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at about 30 miles (50 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this sharper global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away from Pluto, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). That’s twice the resolution of the single-image view captured on July 13 and revealed at the approximate time of New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Video Caption: The hazes in Pluto’s atmosphere, observed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, provide a crucial link between the sunlight-driven chemistry in the upper atmosphere and the reddish-brown hydrocarbons called tholins that rain down and darken the surface. The animation shows several steps: 1) Ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart methane in Pluto’s upper atmosphere. 2) This leads to the buildup of complex hydrocarbons, such as ethylene and acetylene. 3) Clumps of these hydrocarbons condense as ice particles to form the hazes. 4) The hazes are chemically converted to tholins, which fall to the surface and darken Pluto.

New Horizons discovers flowing ices in Pluto’s heart-shaped feature. In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

This annotated image of the southern region of Sputnik Planum illustrates its complexity, including the polygonal shapes of Pluto’s icy plains, its two mountain ranges, and a region where it appears that ancient, heavily-cratered terrain has been invaded by much newer icy deposits. The large crater highlighted in the image is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide, approximately the size of the greater Washington, DC area. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Video caption: This simulated flyover of two regions on Pluto, northwestern Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) and Hillary Montes (Hillary Mountains), was created from New Horizons close-approach images. Sputnik Planum has been informally named for Earth’s first artificial satellite, launched in 1957. Hillary Montes have been informally named for Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. The images were acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across are visible.

New Horizons has found that Pluto’s atmosphere has an unexpectedly low surface pressure. Observations with the New Horizons’ REX radio experiment, made about one hour after closest approach to Pluto on July 14, reveal that the atmospheric surface pressure is about half the value previously inferred from Earth-based observations. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI