Moment of Wonder: Pluto up close

NASA’s New Horizons mission just keeps on giving.

The agency last week released photos — including the one above — that give the closest view available of Pluto’s glaciers, mountains and craters. Most of the craters shown above lie in the 155-mile-wide Burney Basin, named after Venetia Burney, the English schoolgirl who first proposed the name “Pluto” when it was discovered in 1930.

Check out the layering in the interior walls of craters such as the large one in the center. Such layers usually signify an important change in surface composition or a major geological event.

If you want to see a larger swath of Pluto’s surface, check out this mosaic of images NASA created to show a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide trending from its horizon across the al-Idrisi Mountains and onto the shoreline of Sputnik Planum. Posting it here would really do the image no justice.