by Jason Snell
Crescent Pluto
There was an amazing image release from the New Horizons team today. It was taken looking back at Pluto from 11,000 miles away, just 15 minutes after New Horizons made its closest approach back in mid-July. It shows a crescent Pluto, with its tall water-ice mountains shown in sharp relief, trailing off to the horizon, as well as Pluto’s hazy atmospheric layers.
The image’s dimensions are a mind-bending 5000-by-8888 pixels, so there’s plenty of detail here, beyond even what my 5K Retina iMac can display without zooming in.