When most people think of Pluto they don't imagine it in rainbow colors, but a new false color image by NASA shows the dwarf planet in stunning psychedelics.
Scientists at NASA's New Horizons mission created the colorful image sing a technique called principal component analysis. The method highlights the subtle but distinct regions of Pluto.
The data for the image was collected by the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/MVIC color camera on July 14 at 11:11 AM UTC, from a range of 22,000 miles. The incredible image was presented by Will Grundy of the New Horizons' surface composition team on Nov. 9 at the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland.
New Horizons also recently released the image below of the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto's "heart" (Tombaugh Regio). The image will help NASA scientists improve their maps of the dwarf planet's regions, including its north pole and prominent dark spot seen at the bottom of the image called Krun Macula.
New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It passed Jupiter before reaching Pluto and performing a flyby in the summer of 2015. Pending NASA's approval of an extension, the spacecraft may move further into the mysterious Kuiper belt, which could provide insight into how our solar system was born.
"The New Horizons mission is helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt - a relic of solar system formation," NASA stated on their website.
