Explore the true color version of Pluto's giant moon, Charon. More about New Horizons, the first mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. More about Pluto, the best known world in the Kuiper Belt.
More on the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy debris beyond the orbit of Neptune. This natural-color image of Pluto results from refined calibration of data gathered by New Horizons' color Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The processing creates images that would approximate the colors that the human eye would perceive, bringing them closer to true color than the images released near the encounter.
Pluto Pluto Kuiper Express Pluto in fiction Roger Putnam Rosetta (spacecraft) Sakigake Scattered disc Sedna (dwarf planet) Stardust (spacecraft) Suisei (spacecraft) TAU (spacecraft) Timeline of Rosetta (spacecraft) Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons Trans-Neptunian object Triton (moon) Ulysses (spacecraft) Vega 1 Vega. The original file is very high. The mosaic shows how Pluto's large-scale color patterns extend beyond the hemisphere facing New Horizons at closest approach- which were imaged at the highest resolution.
North is up; Pluto's equator roughly bisects the band of dark red terrains running across the lower third of the map. This new, detailed global mosaic color map of Pluto is based on a series of three color filter images obtained by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera aboard New Horizons during the NASA spacecraft's close flyby of Pluto in July 2015. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 450,000 kilometers (280,000 miles) away, show features as small as 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles), twice the resolution of the single.
Color map of Pluto This map contains data from New Horizons' color imager, Ralph MVIC, in a version processed about a year after the Pluto flyby. The color map shows strong variations in Pluto's color with latitude, from its orangish north to its pinkish midlatitudes to its very dark equatorial band, with Sputnik planitia sitting athwart the band. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto on July 14, 2015.
The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto's surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own.
Pluto in True Color Image Credit:,,; Processing: Explanation: What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi.
