It’s a spectacular new sight that is sure to change how scientists view Pluto and its moon Charon.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has now captured both of these objects over the course of a full day, which stretches about 6.4 Earth days as Pluto rotates much more slowly than Earth does, according to a Mashable report.
The photos were taken between July 7 and 13 as New Horizons approached Pluto, which it reached on July 14, but we’re only now seeing these pictures because of the slow trickle of data from the spacecraft that will continue for many months.
The photos were taken from a distance of between 400,000 and 5 million miles.
The photos are important because now NASA scientists will be able to see the entire surface of Pluto and therefore fully map it out. The only problem is that some of the pictures were taken at much farther out so they won’t be able to get the resolution and therefore detail they’d like. But still, it’s quite an accomplishment.
It wasn’t just Pluto that got the full treatment, but also its moon Charon. Pluto also has four much smaller moons, named Kerberos, Nix, Hydra, and Styx, which are more like asteroids than a traditional moon.
Charon is actually quite large compared to its host planet. It has half the diameter of Pluto, although only an eighth of the mass. It was discovered in 1978 by the U.S. Naval Observatory.
New Horizons came within just 27,000 kilometers, or 17,000 miles, of Charon when it flew by on July 14, and is now the only probe to have visited the tiny system.