The image was obtained at a high phase angle -- that is, with the sun on the other side of Pluto, as viewed by New Horizons.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best colour and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, which show a surprisingly complex and violent history.
The reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is an effect of methane gas escaping from the icy dwarf planet's atmosphere, say scientists who solved the mystery behind the coloured region first spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last year.
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