New Pluto photos are pouring in...

New Pluto photos are pouring in ... from the latest New Horizons data dump.  Astronomers are delighted at not only having all the amazing new data on Pluto (and its moons), but also at the unexpected nature of it.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

When I was a young boy (in the early '60s), first learning about and getting interested in astronomy, we knew almost nothing at all about Pluto.  The very best telescopic photographs of it showed basically a smeared dot.  No telescope existed that could collect enough light from Pluto for even the most basic spectroscopic study.  We knew almost nothing about it.  Now we are about to have vast amounts of data on the chemical composition of Pluto and its atmosphere, its magnetic field, its gravitational field, and high resolution photographs of its surface.  That's a lot of progress within one human lifetime...