Geography of Pluto

The best photos from the New Horizons spacecraft that buzzed Pluto earlier this year were released by NASA providing resolutions of less than 100 yards per pixel.

NASA also published a video compiled from the sharpest views of Pluto seen so far from New Horizons.

The new images show details of craters and mountains, along with icy plains.

The US space agency has released a series of sharp Pluto snapshots, billing them as the best close-ups of the dwarf planet we may see for decades.   

Pluto has blue skies and patches of frozen water, according to the latest data out Oct. 8 from NASA's unmanned New Horizons probe, which made a historic flyby of the dwarf planet in July.

Never before has Pluto -- a resident of the distant Kuiper Belt, a frigid region of the solar system beyond Neptune that is home to many comets and asteroids -- been observed in such detail.    

There's a near-perfect heart shape on Pluto's rusty red surface. The dwarf planet is dotted with bright points which may be ice caps, and a mysterious dark shape nicknamed "The Whale."