The images reveal a great deal of variation and complexity across Pluto’s surface — including the four large dark patches near the equator first spotted by New Horizons late last month. “This object is unlike any other that we have observed,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said during a news briefing today (July 6). New Horizons captured the new photos last Wednesday (July 1) and Friday (July 3), shortly before suffering a glitch that sent it into a precautionary “safe mode” on Saturday (July 4).