CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Photos of Pluto are once again pouring in from the New Horizons spacecraft.

The newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July, becoming the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

This July 14 photo provided by NASA shows a 220-mile-wide view of Pluto taken from the New Horizons spacecraft. The new close-up images of Pluto reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. The Associated Press

This July 14 photo provided by NASA shows a view of Pluto taken from the New Horizons spacecraft. The Associated Press

“If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top – but that’s what is actually there,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal scientist from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains. Dark ridges that some scientists speculate might be dunes also are visible.

One outer solar-system geologist, William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, said if the ridges are, in fact, dunes, that would be “completely wild” given Pluto’s thin atmosphere.

After several weeks of collecting engineering data from New Horizons, scientists started getting fresh Pluto pictures last weekend.

The latest images were released Thursday.

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