NASA scientists have put together detailed images of Pluto taken in July 2015 by the New Horizons spacecraft. The resulting mosaic image became the most detailed view of Pluto in the entire history of the study of the dwarf planet.
“The new image is just magnetic,” says Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission.
"Looking at the picture, I wanted to send another mission to Pluto and take high-resolution photos like these all over the surface."
The photographs that make up the mosaic stretch from one end of Pluto to the other. The width of the territory in the images is from 72 to 88.5 km, NASA reports.
“The shooting angle varies depending on the area of the photo; on the northern edge, the device "looks" at the surface horizontally, on the southern edge - straight down, "- said NASA in a statement.
A series of photos, beautifully shown in a new NASA video, brings to life Pluto's flat plains filled with nitrogen ice. Chunks of light water ice float in nitrogen ice in the dwarf planet's heart-shaped region. Pluto's Rocky Mountains are composed of water ice and are equal in height to the Rocky Mountains on Earth.
New Horizons was 15,850 km from Pluto when these images were taken. The probe then went into deep space to fly to another object in 2019.