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Its flyby elaborated on the aspects of Pluto’s atmosphere and showed more in depth what its atmosphere was composed of: primarily nitrogen with trace amounts of methane and carbon monoxide, with a total atmospheric density of about 10 microbars, one hundred thousand times less dense than our atmosphere.

Additionally, with the New Horizons flyby, we found that its atmosphere formed because when Pluto gets closer to the Sun in its irregular orbit that passes through Neptune’s, the warmth heats up the frozen ices of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide on Pluto’s surface, forming a temporary atmosphere that sticks around.

This is a photo of New Horizons fifteen minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, showing its physical features in high complexity, in grayscale. Pluto seen here has a very bumpy and interesting surface filled with mountains and plains; the plain shown here is Sputnik Planitia. The photo also shows the haze from its atmosphere.