NASA releases dazzling new images of Pluto

BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- New images of Pluto released by NASA's New Horizons team have revealed previously unseen topographic, compositional and colorful details of the planet.

The New Horizons spacecraft passed by the planet in July, with scientists at the space agency continuing to download and process images from its journey to the edge of the solar system.

The centerpiece of the newly released images is an "extended color" image of the entire planet taken using the wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera, or MVIC, which offers new information about Pluto.

"We used MVIC's infrared channel to extend our spectral view of Pluto," said John Spencer, a geology, geophysics and imaging deputy team lead at the Southwest Research Institute, in a press release. "Pluto's surface colors were enhanced in this view to reveal subtle details in a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a wonderfully complex geological and climatological story that we have only just begun to decode."

Another image revealed a vast landscape of rippling ridges along the light line between day and night.

"It's a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles," said William McKinnon, a New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team deputy lead from Washington University in St. Louis. "It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology. This'll really take time to figure out; maybe it's some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto's faint sunlight."

The new images were downloaded on September 19 and 20 and show new details of the Cthulhu Regio, Sputnik Planum, and other mountains and ice features on Pluto.

Among the images is one mapping methane ice across the surface of Pluto and where it gathers, though scientists said they are unsure of why or how the ice has been distributed the way the images show.

"It's like the classic chicken-or-egg problem," said Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team lead at the Lowell Observatory. "We're unsure why this is so, but the cool thing is that New Horizons has the ability to make exquisite compositional maps across the surface of Pluto, and that'll be crucial to resolving how enigmatic Pluto works."