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A fuzzy Pluto seen by Hubble

This was the best look at Pluto we had at the turn of the millennium.
This was the best look at Pluto we had at the turn of the millennium. Image: Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute), Marc Buie (Lowell Observatory), NASA and ESA

Our first half-decent view of Pluto came from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998. The images show two hemispheres of Pluto at a distance of 3 billion miles from Earth, and they were taken in blue light using the telescope’s Faint Object Camera. The actual images by Hubble are at top, and the larger blow-ups are a map of the planet built through image processing of the Hubble data.

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