Pluto gets festive for Christmas in the cosmos

Pluto is the gift that keeps on giving.

On Thursday morning, NASA released a new image of Pluto decked out for the holidays in a festive green and red coloring as its “Image of the Day.”

The image was produced by the New Horizons composition team using scans taken by the New Horizons probe on its brief flyby of the dwarf planet in July. While red and green may suit the dwarf planet, the holiday dressing is displaying false color — or wavelengths not visible to the human eye — brought to life using three infrared wavelength ranges that were placed into red, green and blue color channels.

To see other images of Pluto where it’s not dressed like a holiday ornament, you can check out the NewsHour’s Pluto coverage.