Pluto has snow-capped mountains in areas called Cthulhu range, which stretches halfway around the dwarf planet's equator at more than 1,800 miles. The dwarf planet has methane snow on its peaks, the same methane that composes natural gas on Earth.

The highest peaks in Cthulhu range are coated with bright color, which is referred mostly as methane ice. “That this material coats only the upper slopes of the peaks suggests methane ice may act like water in Earth's atmosphere, condensing as frost at high altitude”, said John Stansberry, a New Horizons science team member from Space Telescope Science Institute of Baltimore.

The mountain range is vast and varied, featuring mountains, craters and fractures in some parts and smooth in other areas. It appears different than surrounding regions as it has dark surface, which is so because methane ice atop mountain gets exposed to sunlight. It was earlier known that the surface of Pluto has ice but it was not known whether the ice comprises nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane or a combination of all three elements.

Scientists believe the snow is composed mostly of frozen methane that condensed from Pluto's atmosphere. The color-enhanced images taken by new horizon was released by NASA to show the location for mountain range where snow was found. As seen from the photo, red area indicates plain, mountain range, while the bright, light-colored peaks display a coat of frozen methane on the top of mountains.

The image measures approximately 280 miles long by 140 miles wide, which covered that snowy range called Cthulhu, which is a bit larger than the state of Alaska. It wasn’t easy to get back the data from planet that far. The New Horizons flew past the planet back in July 2015 and even now, more than half of the data is still on the spacecraft 3 billion miles away.