New photos from New Horizons: the icy canyons of Pluto

Scientists have received a new batch of images from the New Horizons probe (data transfer will continue for several months, due to the large amount of accumulated information and a narrow channel of communication). This time the device sent pictures of the ice canyons of the north pole of Pluto. They are located in the region, which is called the Lowell region, and are placed vertically.

The canyons are quite large - the width of the largest of them reaches about 75 kilometers (marked in yellow on the bottom image), this canyon is located at the very north pole. Its depth is about 4 kilometers. Besides it, there are three smaller canyons (marked in green), whose width is about 10 kilometers. The youngest is the widest canyon. The crumbling walls of the three other canyons are much older than the clear walls of the young “relative”. Right in the middle of the big canyon there is a valley (highlighted in blue).

Asymmetrical formations and pits are highlighted in red. The width of the largest "pit" is 70 kilometers, depth - 4 kilometers.
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Surface colors (shown in extended color gamut) are unusual for Pluto. High regions are colored yellow. The yellowish terraces gradually decline, and gradually move into lower valleys, with a bluish color. Thanks to the infrared camera, it was possible to understand the composition of the ice. Most of the ice is methane. The lesser is nitrogen.


Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

This photo was taken with the Ralph / Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) tool. Image resolution is about 680 meters per pixel. The lower edge of the planetoid in the photo has a real size of 1200 kilometers. A picture was taken from a distance of about 33900 from the surface of Pluto, 45 minutes before the closest approach of the probe to the planetoid.