Ever wondered what the surface of Pluto looks like? If so you’re in luck, because the New Horizons probe has finally beamed some of its images back to Earth and they’re the highest res snaps ever taken.

The dwarf planet was captured at a resolution of 80 metres per pixel, a scale that if used on earth would for example clearly show a city park. This has the folks over at Nasa rather excited as the BBC explains:

“These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on Planet Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, the head of Nasa’s science directorate.

“New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see”…

The mission team prioritised what it wanted to see first, which included some general impressions of Pluto – the broad context. Now, nearly five months on from the flyby, we are being treated to some spectacularly detailed offerings.

Friday’s pictures come from a photographic strip that incorporates a segment of its icy flat terrain informally known Sputnik Planum, and the adjacent rugged al-Idrisi mountains.

More images will gradually be beamed back from the probe, although its current distance from the earth of 5.2 billion km means they tend to trickle in slowly.

If you’d like to see which pictures Nasa chose to describe humanity to extraterrestrial life click HERE.

[source:bbc]