A few months after a close flyby with Pluto, New Horizons spacecraft of NASA has beamed back the sharpest images of the dwarf planet which show layered craters, water ice crust, cliffs and icy mountains in detail. The US space agency has now released these highest resolution photos for space enthusiasts.

The spacecraft captured the small world’s features during a close encounter with it. The newly published pictures have a resolution of about 250–280 feet per pixel. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) of New Horizons took the images about 15 minutes before the probe made its closest approach with Pluto.

When LORRI was taking a photo in every three seconds, the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) was capturing scans of the planet’s surface in very short exposures. John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA Science Mission Directorate, said the new images are showing the real power of the probe and its instruments. Data that New Horizons is sending back to earth is intriguing, Grunsfeld added.

“New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see”, Grunsfeld explained.

Scientists say layered craters’ presence on Pluto hints that their composition has changed at some point. They don’t know whether the layered craters are regional or global. William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team, said the new pictures of layered craters demonstrated the icy crust of the dwarf planet is layered.