In this digital painting, Pluto is depicted as a world of ice in many forms. Its surface shows mountains of rock, thought to be super-cold water ice, and vast fields of carbon dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide snows. Pluto's largest moon, Charon, composed of the same materials, looms large in the sky.

This illustration is based on images and data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft currently exploring the outer reaches of our Solar System.