This September, NASA has released some of the most amazing pictures of Pluto. These closeups of the Planet have been taken with the help of the latest Horizons spacecraft. Earlier, it captured an incomplete picture in which the sun has brightly lit up the planet’s crescent and now, they have released the complete picture, which displays the planet Pluto in its complete glory.
“On July 14th, 2015, this image was captured 15 minutes after the New Horizon’s approached closest to the planet” stated by NASA in a press statement. The image was captured when the spacecraft was looking back at the planet towards the sun.
This image provides a good deal of information about the planet. It shows the deep smoggy layers of the planet’s atmosphere. The plateaus were discovered to be on the left side. “The parallel streaks in the sky beyond the Pluto are the stars that were tarnished out by the camera’s motion” according to the NASA.
The picture was captured with the help of the New Horizons’ MVIC or the Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera. The image was taken from a distance of 18000 kilometers or 11,000 miles to the Planet Pluto.
The journey of New Horizons’ began nine years ago. It started on January 19th, 2006 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. On July 15th, 2015 the NASA’s New Horizon’s MVIC flew past the Planet and a day earlier, it was successful to capture new striking images of the planet.