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16th April 2015

First colour image of Pluto and Charon is returned by New Horizons

NASA's New Horizons probe has returned its first colour image of Pluto and Charon. It was taken from a distance of 71 million miles – equivalent to the distance between the Sun and Venus. At this range, neither Pluto nor Charon are well resolved, but their distinctly different appearances can be seen. The two are almost like a binary planet system: they are so close together that Charon would appear 60 times larger than our full Moon when viewed in Pluto's sky. New Horizons is due to arrive on 14th July, after a 3 billion mile (4.8 billion km) journey that began in January 2006. It will study Pluto and its surface in never-before-seen detail, along with its five moons, before passing through the Kuiper belt.

"This is pure exploration," says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator. "We're going to turn points of light into a planet and a system of moons before your eyes ... This 21st century encounter is going to be an exploration bonanza unparalleled in anticipation since the storied missions of Voyager in the 1980s."

 

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