The result? A patchy, pixelated sphere just 12 pixels wide. Even from these images, Pluto seemed pretty intriguing. The light and dark pixels seemed to suggest geological or atmospheric activity.

Before New Horizons, the best images of Pluto revealed nothing more than a few light and dark patches. The best Hubble Telescope images were only 150 pixels across. The new pictures show much more ...

This cutaway image of Pluto shows a section through the area of Sputnik Planitia, with dark blue representing a subsurface ocean and light blue for the frozen crust. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert!

Images and data have been flowing in since NASA's epic New Horizons Pluto flyby on Tuesday morning, and the latest image released shows an exaggerated color map of Pluto and its moon Charon.