NASA has a Christmas present for fans of the former ninth planet in our solar system.
The space agency this week released an image of Pluto sporting red and green colors, which NASA called “Christmas Pluto.”
A team working with the New Horizons interplanetary space probe produced the image using a scan obtained when the spacecraft flew by the dwarf planet on July 14 at a distance of about 67,000 miles. Putting together three infrared wavelength ranges into red, green and blue color channels created the “false color Christmas portrait,” NASA said in a statement.
New Horizons was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto, which was demoted from a full-sized planet to a dwarf planet in 2006 in a decision by the International Astronomical Union.
NASA also released a Christmas song on its official Tumblr account dedicated to Pluto. It was written by a NASA employee for a holiday party and is meant to be sung to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”:
Intro
You know Mercury, Venus and Earth and Mars, too
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
But do you recall the most famous Solar System body of all
Verse 1
Pluto the small dwarf planet
Has a very shiny glow
And if you had discovered it
Your name might be Clyde Tombaugh
Verse 2
All of the other planets
used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Pluto
join in planetary games
Verse 3
Then one fateful summer eve
New Horizons came to say
“Pluto with your heart so bright
Won’t you let me flyby tonight?”
Verse 4
Then all the planets loved him
and they shouted out with glee, “NASA!”
Pluto the small dwarf planet
You’ll go down in history!
