Pluto is more colorful than it appears to the human eye. NASA has shown an image in enhanced color. This type of processing makes areas with different chemical compositions visually distinguishable. As a result, it becomes clear that the dwarf planet’s famous heart consists of two geologically different parts.
How the Image Was Created
The image was assembled from data transmitted during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto in July 2015. Color information and high-resolution images were combined through digital processing into a single picture.
Enhancing the colors is not merely a decorative technique. In natural colors, the surface blends into an almost uniform beige tone, making differences in composition difficult to see. NASA presented this version in its Astronomy Picture of the Day feature.
A Heart with Two Halves
The bright heart-shaped region in the lower-right part of the image is known as Tombaugh Regio. In enhanced color, it can be seen that the region is divided into two halves with different geological characteristics.
The left half is Sputnik Planitia. Its surface is unusually smooth, with almost no visible relief.
For an ancient world, such a surface is unexpectedly young. This means that some process renewed it after the dwarf planet itself had already formed.
Why the Plain Lies Opposite Charon
The plain is located almost directly opposite Charon, Pluto’s largest moon. According to planetary scientists’ calculations, this alignment is not accidental. Dense ice within the depression created an excess of mass, causing the icy crust to slowly reorient itself until this region lay along the imaginary line connecting Pluto and Charon.
Such a reorientation is possible only if the crust can move relative to the interior. This forms the basis of a hypothesis proposed by Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and James Keane of the University of Arizona, who independently concluded in 2016 that a layer of liquid water may exist beneath Pluto’s icy crust. Their studies were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
The Route After Pluto
After Pluto, the spacecraft continued beyond Neptune’s orbit. In 2019, it flew past Arrokoth, a small Kuiper Belt object. The speed it has gained is sufficient for the spacecraft eventually to leave the Solar System permanently.
At present, it is traveling through the Kuiper Belt at a distance of about 66 astronomical units from the Sun, and its radio signal takes almost nine hours to reach Earth. Communications remain stable, and the scientific program of the New Horizons mission has been extended to conduct research near the boundary of the heliosphere.
