Pluto: New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto's Heart

July 22, 2015 1:18 PM EDT

Pluto’s heart continues to divulge its secrets as NASA announced the discovery of a new mountain range on the lower-left edge of the planet’s heart-shaped region.

These frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile to one mile high, which is about the same height as the Appalachian Mountains, NASA has revealed in a new image.

See New Horizons' Best Images of Pluto

Pluto False Color New Horizons — An enhanced color global view of pluto released on July 24, 2015. NASA/Reuters

New Horizons Pluto Heart Tombaugh Regio — In the center left of Pluto’s vast heart-shaped feature – informally named “Tombaugh Regio” - lies a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto’s icy mountains and has been informally named Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), after Earth’s first artificial satellite. The image was acquired on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers).NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

New Horizons Pluto Mountain Range — A close-up image of a region near Pluto's equator shows a range of mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it passed within 7,800 feet of the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015.NASA/Getty Images

New Horizons Pluto Heart Mountain Range — A newly discovered mountain range lies near the southwestern margin of Pluto’s heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region), situated between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

New Horizons Pluto Charon — A composite image of Pluto and its largest moon Charon collected separately by New Horizons during approach on July 13 and July 14, 2015. The relative reflectivity, size, separation, and orientations of Pluto and Charon are approximated in this composite image, and they are shown in approximate true color. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Pluto Heart New Horizons — Pluto, seen from the New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015 just before the space craft's historic fly-by.NASA/AP

New Horizons Pluto Charon Moon — NASA's New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015.NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Pluto on July 14, 2015, as seen by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft while it looked back toward the sun.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The newly discovered peaks, which have yet to be named, are located about 68 miles northwest of the Norgay Montes, the frozen mountains that were discovered on July 15 in the first series of photographs that New Horizons beamed back to Earth.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

NASA believes that Sputnik Planum, the left lobe of Pluto’s heart-shaped region, was formed less than 100 million years ago while the darker region, seen on the newly-released image, is probably older by billions of years.

New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto’s Heart

See New Horizons' Best Images of Pluto

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