(Image: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
To see Pluto any sharper, we鈥檇 have to go there again. A from NASA鈥檚 New Horizons spacecraft are the first to show the icy world at the highest resolution possible, taken as the probe flew almost directly overhead.
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Stitched together, the pictures form a strip 80 kilometres wide that pans down from cratered plains to the jagged water ice mountains that ring a vast expanse of nitrogen ice called Sputnik Planum. That region, to the left side of Pluto鈥檚 famous 鈥渉eart鈥�, is a hotbed of recent geologic activity.
These images were snapped about 15 minutes before the probe鈥檚 closest approach to Pluto on 14 July, meaning the resolution is stunning: roughly 80 metres per pixel. At this point, the spacecraft was whizzing by so quickly that each picture had to be a quick, 3-second exposure or it would have blurred.
It looks like the strategy worked. And the New Horizons team is downloading more images from the spacecraft taken at the same time during the next few days, which means we shouldn鈥檛 have to wait long for more crystal-clear close-ups of Pluto鈥檚 jumbled geology.
