March 19, 2001
On your birthday, photons that left distant stars before humans walked the Earth finally completed their journey. You began yours.
Pluto in True Color
Birthday · March 19, 2001
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed
Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.
Date & occasion only
Change the year
APOD published March 19, 2001. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Pluto is mostly brown. The above picture captures the true colors of Pluto as well as the highest surface resolution so far recovered. No spacecraft has yet visited this most distant planet in our Solar System. The above map was created by tracking brightness changes from Earth of Pluto during times when it was being partially eclipsed by its moon Charon. The map therefore shows the hemisphere of Pluto that faces Charon. Pluto's brown color is thought dominated by frozen methane deposits metamorphosed by faint but energetic sunlight. The dark band below Pluto's equator is seen to have rather complex coloring, however, indicating that some unknown mechanisms may have affected Pluto's surface.