Scientists released images of Pluto

This combination of images from July 1 to July 3, 2015, provided by NASA shows Pluto at different distances from the New Horizons spacecraft. Stern’s coveted job title now is principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. Sharper versions will be sent down over the next 16 months as the spacecraft slowly beams all of its raw data across the solar system. In August of that same year, the worldwide Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet.

Although methane and nitrogen ice covers much of the planet’s surface, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains. “So this is telling us you don’t need tidal heating to power [to produce ice mountains]”. “We see water ice on Pluto for the first time. That’s a really important discovery we just made this morning”, he added.

Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape, NASA said in a statement.

“We have no idea at this point”, New Horizons scientist John Spencer, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., told reporters.

The New Horizons team expected to find a cold, dead, and cratered satellite of Pluto.

Kopernik Observatory will hold an event titled “Pluto Palooza” on Wednesday- to view never before seen photos captured by New Horizons.

Pluto (left) and its moon, Charon, (right) in false color.

The science team saved the best to last, only revealing the stunning new Pluto close-up after showing images of Pluto’s small moon Hydra and a close-up of Charon.

“Charon just blew our socks off”, Cathy Olkin, a New Horizons deputy project scientist, said during a press conference Wednesday.

She said that in the north of Charon there was a darkish area and scientists were referring to it informally as Mordor – presumably a reference to the region in JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings“. The picture also shows linear features and troughs circling Charon’s surface – including a canyon that’s 4 to 6 miles (7 to 10 kilometers) deep. Scientists said the peaks — seemingly formed from Plutos icy bedrock — appeared to be a mere 100 million years old. But that didn’t matter to New Horizons, the spacecraft NASA had dispatched to study the planet at the edge of the solar system. Some of Tombaugh’s ashes are aboard New Horizons.

It’s a depression with a peak in the middle, and it looks to be about 50 kilometres across.

Naked pictures of Kim Kardashian may have broken the internet, but the first intimate image of Pluto will give them a run for their money.

The “ice mountain” range – which the experts said is about the size of the Rockies – is in part of the “heart region” of Pluto. He marveled: “I think the whole system is awesome….