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New Horizons Team Shares a Fresh Slice of Charon, Pluto's Biggest Moon

A newly released view of Charon reveals a depression in the icy surface of Pluto's biggest moon — with an irregular peak plopped right in the middle.

Reaching Pluto: '15 Years of Pent Up Emotion'

01:44
By Alan Boyle

A newly released view of the edge of Charon reveals a weird depression in the icy surface of Pluto's biggest moon — with an irregular peak that's plopped right in the middle.

The picture, captured on Tuesday during the New Horizons spacecraft's close encounter with Pluto and its moons, shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters.

"The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat," Jeff Moore, a scientist from NASA’s Ames Research Center who leads New Horizons’ geology, geophysics and imaging team, said Thursday in a NASA image advisory. "This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped."

Reaching Pluto: '15 Years of Pent Up Emotion'

July 15, 201501:44

Related: New Horizons Mission Reveals Huge Crater on Charon

The piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft was about 49,000 miles (79,000 kilometers) away from Charon when its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager took the picture. It's just a foretaste of the goodies that are expected to be released on Friday in conjunction with a 1 p.m. ET news briefing at NASA Headquarters.

Find out about the good stuff by checking in with @NASANewHorizons or @NewHorizons2015 on Twitter, and with DailyPluto.com on Facebook.

Alan Boyle

Alan Boyle is the science editor for NBC News Digital. He joined MSNBC.com at its inception in July 1996, and took on the science role in July 1997 with the landing of NASA's Mars Pathfinder probe. Boyle is responsible for coverage of science and space for NBCNews.com.

Boyle joined NBCNews.com from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he was the foreign desk editor from 1987 to 1996. Boyle has won awards for science journalism from numerous organizations, including the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers. Boyle is the author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference." He lives in Bellevue, Wash.