No, no, no, I mean the (minor) planet, and the arrival of the New Horizons spacecraft thereat. Closest approach is a week from today, and encounter–high bit rate science–starts in five days.

Like everybody who grew up on science fiction, I’ve internalized a picture of Pluto as a cold forbidding place, dark and monochrome so far from the Sun, relatively featureless as either a rock or ice ball. In short, one of the more boring places in the solar system.

But maybe not. From 12.5 million kilometers out:

Yes, I know the image has been considerably enhanced, and that Pluto does in fact get little sunlight. But it’s the part where I naturally assumed dark=monochrome, just because that’s how my own eyes work with the rods and the cones and the things. I wouldn’t have been surprised by whites, greys, blues, and even greens, but brown? This is going to be a lot more interesting than I’d thought.