New Pluto photos show incredible detail

All the media attention lately might be focused on the possibility of water on Mars, but NASA's New Horizons spacecraft continues to send back data from its closest approach to Pluto last July 17, including some of the most incredibly detailed pictures yet of the dwarf planet.

The above colour-enhanced photo is the highest-resolution peek at Pluto ever, highliting the white methane ice covering much of the heart-shaped area known as Sputnik Planum (middle to lower right part of photo). Scientists released it a few days ago.

The image below covers a 120-kilometre section of Sputnik Planum that contains two ice mountains.

 And the picture below details rounded mountains and a weirdly textured 530-kilometre section of Pluto's surface referred to by NASA scientists as "dragon scales", with the region being known informally as Tartarus Dorsa.