The New Horizons spacecraft is travelling towards Pluto surface and a new photo captured by it shows surface geology on the planet. The photo has helped researchers see unusual polygon-shaped features and sharp transitions between bright areas and a dark region along the equator.

New Horizons was 3.3 million miles from Pluto when it captured the new image on Friday. New Horizons is travelling towards the dwarf planet at more than 31,000 mph and will make the closest approach to Pluto on Tuesday. It will pass within about 7,500 miles of Pluto to mark its flyby of the planet on Tuesday.

“Among the structures tentatively identified in this new image are what appear to be polygonal features, a complex band of terrain stretching east-northeast across the planet, approximately 1,000 miles long and a complex region where bright terrains meet the dark terrains of the whale”, said principal investigator Alan Stern in a NASA web post.

The spacecraft has been travelling for more than nine years to reach the planet. It was launched from Earth in 2006 and is all set now to capture hundreds of pictures and other types of research data as it goes the closest to Pluto.

The new image shows the hemisphere of Pluto that always faces its Texas-size moon Charon. The image has a resolution of 17 miles per pixel and allows scientists to get some real signals of the geology on the dwarf planet.

During the flyby of the planet, the spacecraft’s telescopic camera Lorri will capture images at a resolution better than 100m per pixel.