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The geography of Pluto refers to the study and mapping of physical features across the dwarf planet Pluto. On 14 July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] During its brief flyby, New Horizons made detailed geographical measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons .
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
[9] [10] In July 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft was the first to visit Pluto and carried an instrument named Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter in her honour. [11] Mihaly Horanyi, Principal Investigator for the instrument, and Alan Stern visited Mrs Phair at home to present her with a plaque, certificate, and spacecraft model.
A map of Pluto showing the names officially approved by the IAU as of 12 February 2025, along with many informal names in bold and italics. This is a list of named geological features on Pluto , identified by scientists working with data from the New Horizons spacecraft.
The geology of Pluto consists of the characteristics of the surface, crust, and interior of Pluto. Because of Pluto's distance from Earth, in-depth study from Earth is difficult. Many details about Pluto remained unknown until 14 July 2015, when New Horizons flew through the Pluto system and began transmitting data back to Earth. [1]
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Tombaugh Regio (/ ˈ t ɒ m b aʊ ˈ r ɛ dʒ i oʊ /), sometimes nicknamed "Pluto's heart" after its shape, [2] is the largest bright surface feature of the dwarf planet Pluto. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] It lies just north of Pluto's equator, to the northeast of Belton Regio and to the northwest of Safronov Regio , which are both dark features. [ 6 ]
It is an elongated dark region along Pluto's equator, 2,990 km (1,860 mi) long and one of the darkest features on its surface. [ 4 ] After its discovery in 2015, the feature was provisionally named after the fictional deity Cthulhu from the works of H. P. Lovecraft and others, as it was most popular name in its category in an online poll ...