WASHINGTON: A heart-shaped feature was viewed on Pluto’s surface in the most detailed photo yet returned by NASA’s New Horizons probe.
The image, which New Horizons took on Tuesday when it was less than 5 million miles (8 million kilometres) from Pluto, shows a large, heart-shaped feature on the dwarf planet’s surface that measures about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometres) wide.
To its left lies an 1,860-mile-long (3,000-kilometre-long) dark patch along Pluto’s equator that mission scientists are calling the “whale”. Above those features is a polar region that is intermediate in brightness.
A dark region seen in the bottom left is known informally by astronomers as “the whale”.
In April New Horizons sent back its first colour image of Pluto, which was considered the ninth planet in our solar system until 2006 when it was reclassified.
The NASA craft is around the size of a baby grand piano and is the fastest spacecraft ever launched, travelling at around a million miles a day.
