Dr William Grundy of the New Horizons’ surface composition team and his colleagues made this ‘psychedelic’ image of Pluto using a technique called principal component analysis to highlight the color differences between distinct regions of the dwarf planet.

Dr Grundy and co-authors presented this image November 9 at the 47th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

The image data were gathered by New Horizons’ Ralph/MVIC instrument on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 22,000 miles (35,000 km).

“The Ralph instrument is New Horizons’ primary tool for investigating surface compositions in the Pluto system. Ralph consists of a near-infrared spectral imager sharing a 75 mm aperture telescope assembly with a color CCD camera system,” Dr Grundy explained.

“The MVIC (Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera) has seven CCD arrays of which four have interference filters affixed directly on the focal plane.”

“The filters pass wavelengths ranging from 400 through 975 nm, sensitive to coloration by tholin-type materials as well as a weak methane ice absorption band at 890 nm.”

New Horizons is currently 3.21 billion miles (5.17 billion km) from Earth and 90.2 million miles (145.2 million km) beyond Pluto. It is healthy and all systems are operating normally.

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William M. Grundy et al. 2015. Pluto System Surface Composition Results. 47th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting. Abstract # 100.04