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A view of Pluto's northern hemisphere built by compositing multiple detailed images and adjusting them for perspective. The foreground is dominated by the dark Cthulu Regio, which borders the smooth, light Sputnik Planum.
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Sputnik Planum in all its glory.
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Here, the smooth plains of Sputnik Planum end in chaotic, jumbled terrain. In a rarity, NASA can't seem to think of an Earth-bound analog to compare the terrain to.
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A high-resolution image of a 350km wide region of Pluto. Mountains and a smooth, crater-free plain dominate the image, but researchers think some of the details may reveal dunes of a granular material.
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A raw image shows Pluto's atmosphere (left), while processing indicates that there are several discrete layers within it.NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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An image of Charon taken from about 470,000km away. For a small body, Charon is very feature-rich. There are mountains, crustal fractures, smooth plains, and differences in reflectivity.
Pluto, given its small size and great distance from the Sun, simply can't support many of the geological processes that have created features on other planets. Its largest moon, Charon, can't generate the sorts of tidal forces that drive the formation of terrain on the moons of the gas giants.
Yet the few images that were sent back during the New Horizons flyby revealed a world filled with complex features. Now, we're starting to get multiple, detailed images of the dwarf planet. Hopefully we'll find some clues about Pluto's enigmatic features hidden in the pixels. These include large, smooth plains that imply a recent remodeling of the planet's surface, possible dunes of granular material and glaciers of frozen nitrogen, and mountains, ridges, and other complex, jumbled terrain.
Plus, NASA is promising that a more detailed look at some of the dwarf planet's moons will be making their way to Earth later on Friday.
Listing image by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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