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Pluto Map Shows ‘Whale,’ ‘Doughnut’

Made with New Horizons photos.

A newly released map of Pluto, made from images from the New Horizons space probe, shows distinctive markings, including shapes of a whale and a doughnut on the dwarf planet’s surface. The map, made of images gathered between June 27 and July 3, is not as sharp as what was expected after the probe’s historic flyby. Nonetheless, it shows spotty terrain in the east, the causes of which are garnering much speculation, and a doughnut-like area near the whale’s tail that scientists think may be an impact crater or a volcano. The probe is expected to gather 5,000 times as much data from Pluto and its moons as the Mariner expedition got from Mars in 1965.