New Close Up Photos of Pluto Wow Scientists

A new set of close-up images taken when the NASA's New Horizon's spacecraft passed by Pluto reveal a landscape that's rife with interesting topography. Scientists are thrilled and surprised by the results, according to NBC News. 

“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado, in a NASA release. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.”

Among the surprising features are dunes, nitrogen ice flows that ooze out of a mountainous regions onto plains, and complex networks of valleys. 

The images were taken during a July 14, 2015 flyby of the planet. 

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