Beautiful Paintings Show What It'd Be Like to Stand on Pluto's Surface

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is beaming back plenty of gorgeous images from its recent Pluto flyby. And those scenic vistas are inspiring artistic renderings of the planet, too. Artist Karl Kofoed used NASA’s new knowledge of Pluto to create a series of images that depict what it looks like to stand on the dwarf planet’s surface. 

The painting above, for instance, shows Pluto from the jagged vantage point of someone standing in the “chaos region,” which New Horizons photographed from 1100 miles above the surface. 

This one shows the dwarf planet’s largest moon, Charon, rising above the mountainous geography. 

Another depicts Pluto’s icy surface, covered in frozen nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other compounds that form glaciers. 

In Kofoed’s imagination, Pluto is a barren but beautiful world—a frozen, hilly desert. It makes me want to go camping there. 

[h/t: io9]

All images by K.B. Kofoed via NASA