Number 262 (Story #1), March 14, 1996 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein THE SURFACE OF PLUTO HAS BEEN IMAGED for the first time. The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a series of high- resolution pictures throughout Pluto's 6.4-day rotation period. The photo sequence reveals that Pluto possesses more visible large-scale features than any planet except for Earth. The features include a variety of dark and bright spots and a dark stripe across the frosty north pole. Pluto had not previously been imaged clearly before, even with the bigger Earth-based telescopes, because its angular size on the sky is only a tenth of an arcsecond across. All of this comes at a time when some astronomers want to take away Pluto's status as a planet. (NASA press release, 7 March 1996.)