7 March
1996: On 7 March 1996, the first surface photos of Pluto were released.
Although the only Solar System planet never visited by spacecraft, it was successfully photographed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The release presented the images made in 1994, by a team of astronomers. To create a global map of the surface of Pluto, they took a total of 12 images at 4 distinct longitudes in visible light and 8 images in the ultraviolet. These covered nearly the entire surface of Pluto, taken as the planet rotated through a 6.4-day period.
Pluto is revealed as a complex object, with more large-scale contrast than any planet, except Earth. The images also show almost a dozen distinctive albedo features, or provinces, never seen before.
