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Pluto’s close-up: More photos beamed back from New Horizons flyby
Following Tuesday’s flyby of Pluto, NASA released close-up images of the former ninth planet.
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For the first time on Pluto, this view reveals linear features that may be cliffs, as well as a circular feature that could be an impact crater.
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A view of Pluto and Charon as they would appear if placed slightly above Earth's surface and viewed from a great distance.
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Following Tuesday’s flyby of Pluto, NASA released close-up images of the former ninth planet. The photos taken show mountains as high as 11,000 feet above an icy terrain.
“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” says Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team.
The images were taken about an hour and a half before New Horizons approached Pluto, 478,000 miles from Pluto’s surface. It will take 16 months for all the data to reach Earth, according to the Associated Press.
NASA tweeted this clip:
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