Take a sneak peek at Pluto

The first colour images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last week — seen here backlit by the Sun — reveal that the hazes are blue. Also, in a second significant finding, New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on the dwarf planet.

For the first time, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto — the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.

Did you use our observing guide to view or image Pluto? Following New Horizons’ historic flyby, one budding astrophotographer living in a light-polluted UK town fulfils a long-time ambition to capture Pluto for himself.