To represent their New Horizons spacecraft moving on from Pluto, NASA released images of the dwarf planet backlit by the sun.
According to ABC News, NASA unveiled the image as part of a news conference Friday. New Horizons captured the image with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) about seven hours after making its closest approach to the dwarf planet.
New Horizons was some 1.25 million miles from Pluto when it took the photo, NASA stated in a press release.
"We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now - 10 days after closest approach - we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, said at the press conference. "With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling."
By looking back at Pluto, with the sun shining behind it, New Horizons saw haze in the dwarf planet's atmosphere sitting 80 miles above the surface in one 50-mile layer and another measuring 30 miles.
"My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt," Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo., said at the press conference. "It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries - it brings incredible beauty."
