Tombaugh Regio, sometimes nicknamed "Pluto's heart" after its shape, is the largest bright surface feature of the dwarf planet Pluto. It lies just north of Pluto's equator, to the northeast of Belton Regio and to the northwest of Safronov Regio, which are both dark features. Its western lobe, a 1,000 km (620 mi)-wide plain of nitrogen and other ices lying within a basin, is named Sputnik Planitia. The eastern lobe consists of high-albedo uplands thought to be coated by nitrogen transported through the atmosphere from Sputnik Planitia, and then deposited as ice. Some of this nitrogen ice then returns to Sputnik Planitia via glacial flow. The region is named after Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto.
A detailed view of Tombaugh Regio; a constructed mosaic of monochrome images by New Horizons.
The two northern lobes of Tombaugh Regio can be seen to have different compositions in this false-color image (13 July 2015).
Carbon monoxide ice on Pluto (green) is concentrated in Sputnik Planitia. (14 July 2015).
Mosaic of left lobe of Tombaugh Regio, showing the young plain Sputnik Planitia plus mountains to the south (Norgay Montes) and southwest (Hillary Montes), near the east margin of the older, dark cratered terrain of Belton Regio.
Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of Earth's moon, and one-third its volume.
Pluto, imaged by the New Horizons spacecraft, July 2015. The most prominent feature in the image, the bright, youthful plains of Tombaugh Regio and Sputnik Planitia, can be seen at right. It contrasts the darker, cratered terrain of Belton Regio at lower left
Clyde Tombaugh, in Kansas
Sputnik Planitia is covered with churning nitrogen ice "cells" that are geologically young and turning over due to convection.
Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera image of Pluto in enhanced color to bring out differences in surface composition.