Top 10 Pluto Images From New Horizons

New Horizons Press Release:

One year ago, NASA’s New Horizons mission made history by exploring Pluto and its moons – giving humankind our first real look at this fascinating world on the frontier of our solar system.

Since those amazing days in July 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home for scientists and the public alike to study, analyze, and just plain love. From Pluto’s iconic “heart” and sweeping ice‐ mountain vistas to its flowing glaciers and dramatic blue skies, it’s hard to pick just one favorite picture. So the mission team has picked 10 – and in no special order, placed them here.

Vast Glacial Flows

Jagged Ice Shorelines and Snowy Pits

Blue Skies

Charon Becomes a Real World

The Vistas of Pluto

A Dynamic Duo: Pluto and Charon in Enhanced Color

Strange Snakeskin Terrain

Pluto’s Heart

Far Away Snow‐Capped Mountains

Colorful Composition Maps of Pluto

The powerful instruments on New Horizons not only gave scientists insight on what Pluto looked like, their data also confirmed (or, in many cases, dispelled) their ideas of what Pluto was made of. These compositional maps – assembled using data from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) component of the Ralph instrument – indicate the regions rich in ices of methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2) and carbon monoxide (CO), and, of course, water ice (H2O). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI