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Sleipnir Fossa Sprawling across Pluto's icy landscape is an unusual geological feature that resembles a giant spider."Oh, what a tangled web Pluto's geology weaves," said Oliver White, a member of the New Horizons geology team from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. "The pattern these fractures form is like nothing else we've seen in the outer solar system, and shows once again that anywhere we look on Pluto, we see something different."As shown in the enhanced color image above – obtained by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015 – this feature consists of at least six extensional fractures (indicated by white arrows) converging to a point near the center. The longest fractures are aligned roughly north-south, and the longest of all, Sleipnir Fossa, is more than 360 miles (580 kilometers) long.
Tenzing Montes Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured a near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto's horizon. The smooth expanse of Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including Tenzing Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto's tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 230 miles (380 kilometers) across.
