NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has discovered a new mountain range in a heart-shaped region named Tombaugh Regio.

These frozen peaks are estimated to be 2,600 to 5,200 feet (1-1.5 km) high, about the same height as the Appalachian Mountains.

They lie near the southwestern margin of Tombaugh Regio, situated between bright, icy plains and dark terrain.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains (called Sputnik Planum) to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said New Horizons team member Dr Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center.

“There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

While Sputnik Planum is less than 100 million years old, the darker region probably dates back billions of years.

“The bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center),” Dr Moore said.

This newest image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager aboard New Horizons on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 km).

Features as small as a half-mile (1 km) across are visible.

The image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.