Sunset on Pluto

(satellite beep echoing)

(light upbeat music) Check this out.

This is a sunset on Pluto.

It's one of the most recent stunning images beamed back

from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

Which is slowly sending home postcards

from its travels at the edge of our solar system.

The photo was made in July

when the little probe whizzed past

the dwarf planet some three billion miles away from Earth.

Let's look closer.

Those are the Norgay and Hillary mountains.

Peaks named for the first climbers

to summit Earth's Mount Everest.

The flat plain is the Sputnik Planum.

Those rings are hazy layers of Pluto's nitrogen atmosphere.

Scientists think there might even be some fog.

Hinting at a daily change in weather on Pluto.

Earth's weather has a water cycle.

On Pluto it appears to be a nitrogen cycle.

See these swirls?

They're nitrogen glaciers.

Pretty cool, huh?