NASA Space Update: Best Of Pluto’s Surface Images Captured, Thanks To New Horizons Camera

NASA shared an image of what others said were the "best close-up of Pluto" in December. The image that has been gathered by New Horizons was a detailed, yet incomplete set. Now, the space agency's daring probe has transmitted more data of better Pluto images back to Earth, from the camera on board the New Horizons.

The new NASA image will allow the researchers to put the pieces together with the rest of the data. These new "mosaic strip" covers a bigger part of Pluto's surface, helping the scientists put together what the rest of the dwarf planet looks like.

Interesting that #Pluto behaves more like a planet when interacting with solar wind. ;-) https://t.co/vQsIemFwtO pic.twitter.com/cSqcrcnDfI

— NASA New Horizons (@NASANewHorizons) May 4, 2016

NASA's New Horizons camera took the information while it flew by on July 14, 2015 from a diagonal segment crossing hundreds of miles across the surface of the one side of Pluto. The top of the image starts at the dwarf planet's craterous "limb," prior to descending through some "washboard" terrain, which is a collection of sharp, chaotic mountains and the stretch of nitrogen ice plains.

At the bottom, close to the "terminator" line that separates day and night, the fields give way to the rugged highlands that are interrupted by deep, dark pits. The width of the strip differs in size from more than 55 miles, or 90 kilometers at the top to an estimate of 45 miles, or 75 kilometers at the bottom. Pluto's enormous are shown in varying colors that give an indication of the changeable environmental and terrain conditions across its surface. The image was captured with the use of LORRI, Long Range Reconnaissance Imager camera on board New Horizons, Mirror reported.

While the camera swings further down, the plain becomes increasingly marked and hummocky prior to finally moving into the darker highland terrain that joins the plain near the terminator line. At such point, the spacecraft is positioned to look straight at the dwarf planet's surface

According to principal investigator Alan Stern of New Horizon's Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the new image product is magnetic that he feels like wanting to return to another Pluto exploration and collect more high-resolution images like the ones transmitted across the whole surface, according to Giz Mag.