NASA shares photo of the frozen world, internet calls it 'black hole'

Dwarf planet Pluto has not yet completed one orbit around the Sun since its discovery. Pluto’s distant elliptical and tilted orbit takes it as far as 49 times the distance of Earth from the Sun, a measure of distance known as an astronomical unit. Pluto has a typical distance from the Sun of 39 AU, or 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometres). Pluto, like Venus and Uranus, has a retrograde rotation, and its days are longer (153 hours) than those on Earth.

Pluto's little atmosphere, seen here as a blue circle in an otherwise black sky, serves to break up the monotony of outer space.

Pluto has a complex terrain covered in craters, mountains, plains, and valleys that are covered by a thin atmosphere that expands when Pluto is closer to the Sun and contracts when Pluto is further away, contributing to its freezing -375 to -400 degree Fahrenheit temperatures (-226 to -240 degrees Celsius).

At a distance of 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometres), the New Horizons spacecraft used its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera to take this picture of the dwarf planet Pluto (MVIC). The spacecraft's mission was extended by two years in 2022 so that it may continue investigating the solar system's outskirts.

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Pluto's beautiful blue haze is likely the consequence of photochemical smog caused by the interaction of sunlight with methane and other chemicals in the planet's atmosphere, according to scientists. The same phenomenon that may make haze seem BLUE on Earth also occurs when these hydrocarbons collect into microscopic haze particles and deflect blue sunlight.