It has blue skies and water, but don't expect to take a holiday there any time soon.

NASA on Friday announced that the first colour photos of Pluto's atmosphere show that the dwarf planet's skies are blue and its surface has patches of ice.

The blue-tinged atmosphere of Pluto as taken by the New Horizon probe. Credit:NASA

"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

The Kuiper Belt is a 3700-billion-kilometre-wide, donut-shaped ring beyond Neptune that contains about a trillion comets and other objects, such as the dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris.