New Horizons mission is close to reach at its climax in July. With passing time, it has been providing clearer pictures and scientists can see Pluto's black spots and Charon's dark pole size increase in the spacecraft's virtual windshield.

New Horizons has travelled for nine years and three billion miles. It is now less than two weeks and 9.5 million miles away from Pluto, which is around six billion kilometers from earth. On July 14, the New Horizons probe will pass close to the dwarf planet. After passing Pluto, New Horizons will follow the earlier Voyager probes into deep space.

Every day, image quality and size have been improving. Images taken from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has shown patterns of dark and light areas on Pluto. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute said the images also show dark patches, but it is not known for now what the spots are.

New Horizons team member Amanda Zangari has even compared Pluto to Triton, a moon of Neptune. "Both Pluto and Triton have a dark equatorial region and bright poles. Among the team, we've been impressed at how much they match. Pluto's dark patch is quite different though", said Stern.

He further affirmed that Triton has geysers, plumes and cantaloupe terrain. Researchers have yet to know what lies in Pluto. In the next two weeks, many features of the planet will become clear, as the piano-sized spacecraft will come within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet's surface.