‘Beautiful Eye Candy’: Frozen Plains in Pluto’s Heart

Vast frozen plains exist next door to Pluto’s big, rugged mountains sculpted of ice, scientists said Friday, three days after humanity’s first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet.

This July 14, 2015 photo provided by NASA shows an image taken from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft showing a new close-up image from the heart-shaped feature on the surface of Pluto that reveals a vast, craterless plain. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI via AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Vast frozen plains exist next door to Pluto’s big, rugged mountains sculpted of ice, scientists said Friday, three days after humanity’s first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet.

The New Horizons spacecraft team revealed close-up photos of those plains, which they’re already unofficially calling Sputnik Planum after the world’s first man-made satellite.

“Have a look at the icy frozen plains of Pluto,” principal scientist Alan Stern said during a briefing at NASA headquarters. “Who would have expected this kind of complexity?”

Stern described the pictures coming down from 3 billion miles away as “beautiful eye candy.”

This photo taken Tuesday, July 14, 2015, at approximately 6:30 a.m. EDT, shows Pluto's largest moon Charon, left, with a captivating feature, a depression with a peak in the middle, shown in the upper left corner of the inset image at right. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI via AP