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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

New Horizons' first color view of Pluto and Charon

New Horizons' first color view of Pluto and Charon
New Horizons' first color view of Pluto and Charon This image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by the Ralph color imager aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on April 9 and downlinked to Earth the following day. It is the first color image ever made of the Pluto system by a spacecraft on approach. The image was made from a distance of about 115 million kilometers. NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

The image above has been enlarged dramatically from the original data, probably by a factor of six. Here is a simulation of the resolution of the original data.

New Horizons' first color view, "de-enlarged"
New Horizons' first color view, "de-enlarged" This image was made by reducing the resolution of the publicly released version by a factor of six, then enlarging it again by a factor of six using nearest-neighbor subsampling.Image: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Emily Lakdawalla