On May 2, a new composite map of Pluto was produced. The map showed most detailed and sharpest view of the dwarf planet. It showed chunks of water ice with sharp and angled corners that float amidst solid nitrogen.

According to Gizmodo, the images show water ice chunks floating amidst the bright deposits of denser, softer solid nitrogen. It also shows Pluto's icy surface which is about 2 miles (3 km) lower than the surrounding terrain. Even after eight months of New Horizons Historic Flyby of Pluto, data from the intrepid space probe continues to trickle.

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Pluto's black and white updated global map includes all resolved images of the surface that was earlier acquired by New Horizons (July 7 to 14, 2015). Some of these new images just came during the last week of April.

In the new map, Pluto's sharpest view is available, with pixel resolutions 18 miles (30 km) on the Charon-facing side (left and right edges of the map) to 770 feet (235 meters) on the side facing New Horizons (when it made its closest approach on July 14). The planet is adorned with icy volcanoes with the activity of five moons. The non-encounter side is not shown in much detail due to greater distances at the time of image capturing.

NASA also revealed a shaded relief view of the region that surrounds the left side of Pluto's distinctive heart-shaped feature (which is informally dubbed Sputnik Planum), also known as Tombaugh Regio.

Recently, NASA also discovered the dwarf planet's moon which is much smaller than its planet. NASA is continuously working on improving the color maps and adding the photos as soon as they are received. Due to bandwidth limitations, New Horizons will take more than a year to transmit all the collected data during flyby.

TagsPluto, Space, planets, solar system, NASA