NASA announced on Thursday that Pluto has blue skies and patches of red frozen water, as the first ever spacecraft sent to Pluto, New Horizons transmitted new images. Among the released images, a picture has revealed the first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, which seems to reflect blue color.

The space agency said that the high-altitude haze was very similar to the one seen in Saturn's moon Titan. NASA added that the haze has been caused by the chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane affected by the sunlight and ultimately turning into ‘soot-like particles’ growing and settling toward the surface.

Carly Howett, science team researcher from Southwest Research Institute said that from the striking blue tint, they have come to know about the size and composition of the haze particles.

Howett added, “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger-but still relatively small-soot-like particles we call tholins”.

New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Alan Stern, said that nobody has expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt. Stern called it beautiful. The Kuiper Belt is present at a distant region of the Solar System beyond Neptune. The belt has many comets and asteroids.

Stern added that all those haze layers were actual layers in Pluto's atmosphere that stretch literally over 100 miles.

"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," Silvia Protopapa, another science team member, said. "We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."

"We expected water ice to be there, but we've searched for water ice in Pluto's spectrum for decades and not seen it before now," Alex Parker, another member from Southwest Research Institute, said via BBC.