Fifteen minutes after the New Horizons spacecraft blew past Pluto at a blistering 32,500 miles per hour (14.5 kilometers per second) back in July, it turned around to snap a downright breathtaking image of a near-sunset. The image showed icy mountain tops and confusingly smooth plains against a hydrocarbon haze, all lit by the faint sunlight that reaches billions of miles out into the Kuiper belt.
The only way this startling image of the last explored world in the solar system could be better is if it was in color. Unfortunately, New Horizons returned no such data. Reddit to the rescue!
Space: Again proving that all the best sci-fi novel covers are of real cosmic objects. Click to enlarge.
The image above, manipulated by Redditor Toppo, is going to be your new wallpaper. Though it’s not exactly accurate — lens flare and stars were added — the colorized image retains everything that made the original awesome while giving our color-hungry brains something to drool over.
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IMAGES: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
