with that, i'll turn it over to hal weaver, who is our project scientist. hal's going to give you a little bit of hydrotherapy. hal? >> thank you very much, allen. well, pluto and sharon are going to steal the day today. this is going to be -- these awesome images you'll see in a few minutes. let's not forget that pluto has four small moons as well that we want to collect data on. starting from closest to the pluto, and going out. this morning we got the first really well-resolved scale. two miles per pixel. this is about the same number of pixels across hydra. prior to the new horizons revealing of the hydra here, we were uncertain hugh big hydra was. it could have been from 20 miles across to almost 100 miles across. new horizons has made it easy. just count the number of pixels across. 28 by 19 miles. the elongated object, hydra is not a planet. but 30% larger in one dimension than another. this is very interesting. you see variations in the brightness across the surface. if you go to the next slide, this shows -- what we did here is sub-sample the image

with that, i'll turn it over to hal weaver, who is our project scientist. hal's going to give you a little bit of hydrotherapy. hal? >> thank you very much, allen. well, pluto and sharon are going to steal the day today. i mean this is going to be -- these are awesome images you'll see in a few minutes. but let's not forget that pluto has four small moons as well that we want to collect data on. starting from closest to pluto and going out is styx, nyx, curburo and hydra. this morning we got the first really well-resolved images of hydra, which is shown at the native scale. two miles per pixel. this is about the same number of pixels across hydra. that we had apros pluto in mid-june. so, we're ecstatic about this. prior to the new horizons revealing of hydra here we were completely uncertain about how big hydra was. it could have been anywhere from 20 miles across to almost 100 miles across. new horizons has made it easy. just count the number of pixels across. 28 by 19 miles. the elongated object, hydra is not a planet. it's about 30% larger in one dimensi

. >> reporter: hal weaver is the new horizons project scientist. he admits to some nerves here in the home stretch. >> oh, yeah. i'm somewhat nervous because in the space business, you're only as strong as your weakest link. and we've put so much effort into making sure that we squeeze as much as possible out of this mission scientifically. >> reporter: and that scientific "to-do list" is a long one. despite what we may imagine, pluto is no simple ice-covered rock. although with a surface temperature of 387° below zero fahrenheit, there is plenty of ice. ice made of carbon dioxide methane, ethane and nitrogen-- also the main ingredient of its atmosphere. besides cold, the pluto weather can be cloudy, hazy and windy the sun is so distant that high noon on pluto is like dusk here on earth. it appears there are mountains and valleys. and, yes, it is red. sorry mars, you're not as special as we once thought. >> so we think that the color of the surface is a direct byproduct of a process called, "space weathering" where the radiation from the sun and co