Pluto's North Pole, New Horizons image. Enhanced colour image of the north polar area on Pluto. Long canyons run vertically across this area, informal

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Pluto's North Pole, New Horizons image. Enhanced colour image of the north polar area on Pluto. Long canyons run vertically across this area, informally named Lowell Regio. The widest of the canyons (at left) is about 75 kilometres wide and runs close to the North Pole. These canyons may be evidence for an ancient period of tectonics. Large, irregularly-shaped pits may indicate where subsurface ice has melted or sublimated from below, causing the ground to collapse. This image was obtained by New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). It was obtained just before closest approach on 14 July 2015.

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Size: 3593px × 2441px
Photo credit: © NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: -, 14, 2015, 21st, camera, canyon, canyons, century, cold, coloured, craters, dwarf, false-coloured, frozen, geological, geology, horizons, ice, ices, icy, imaging, july, limb, lowell, multispectral, mvic, north, outer, pits, planet, planetary, pluto, pole, probe, ralph, regio, science, solar, space, system, visible