ZOOMING IN ON PLUTO

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft continues to send data back from its Pluto flyby last July. At year’s end, more than half the data remained on the spacecraft, waiting to be sent back to the eager eyes of scientists and the public. The highest-resolution data reveal complicated geology and mysterious terrain, and Pluto’s active ice surface is still delivering surprises. — K. H.

PLUTO’S PITS.
Across Pluto’s heartshaped region known as Tombaugh Regio, new high-resolution images (this region is 50-by-50 miles or 80-by-80 kilometers) reveal a complicated system of pits. Ice fracturing and evaporation is probably responsible for the many tiny indentations. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

NOW IN COLOR.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft caught its sharpest views of Pluto from a distance of only 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers), yielding black and white views with a scale of only 280 feet (85 meters) per pixel, with the colorimage overlays less resolved, roughly 2,000 feet (630m) per pixel. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

STEPPING ACROSS
The zigzag images here are due to New Horizons’ imaging camera acting in “ridealong” mode with its spectrometer. The pair of instruments sampled terrain from the far west of New Horizons’ view of Pluto to the daynight line known as the terminator, skirting the dark Cthulhu Regio along the way. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI