Sunset on Pluto [Slide Show]

The latest jaw-dropping images from NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto almost seem unreal, too vivid and majestic to exist anywhere outside of an artist’s imagination. Yet real they are, captured shortly after the spacecraft’s closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14 and subsequently downlinked to Earth on September 13. Draped in shadow by the glancing light of a far-distant setting sun, a landscape of craggy ice mountains and flowing glaciers stretches to the horizon, blanketed by layers of haze and fog. As gorgeous as these new images are, the best may still be in store: Limits on data-transmission rates from the outskirts of the solar system ensure that more Plutonian pictures with higher resolution will be whispered back to Earth for many months to come