It took 2.5 years for SPACENOW to come up with the 6 perfect images, as we call it, that document a genuinely stunning discovery.

We combed through 3.500 exposures taken between 2009 and 2011 of the object now called KBO 134 340 PLUTO,to select those that would yeld the best results using the groundbreaking HMIR technique.

These images revealed a world beyond anyboby's wildest guess. At first,it looked like an icy, amorphous rock rotating on its side, 68º inclined in relation to the sidereal north, 5 billion kilometers from the Sun.

All this would sound space business as usual if it wasn't for a knock out surprise Pluto had in store.

From the time of the second shot, image # 1, around march 2009,it became clear that a major astronomical first was brewing. The protuding surface feature with an odd triangular shadow projected to the right of the plutonian crust was no ordinary find. Could it be what it appeared to be? There was only one way to find out.It had to be captured on its side.

Dwarf planet Pluto then became the target of an intense scrutiny!

That would require taking hundreds of exposures more,obtained in every which way possible. This meant,dealing with partly cloudy skies, negotiating with temperamental CCD cameras, eyewitnessing late night\early morning Pluto rises and frustratingly not finding Pluto at all even with perfect skies.

All that effort,though, hit pay dirt when image # 2 was processed.Seeing is believing and there were no more doubts. The Kuiper belt was apparently a whole new space realm. An environment where gigantic mountains could get sculpted, possibly due to Pluto's extreme proximity to its oversized main moon,Charon.

The discovery was immediately passed on to the International Astronomical Union and later that year, a meeting was held during their general assembly in august,when the HMIR technique was demonstrated and the first Pluto images were shown.

The gigantic pyramid-like mountain,as it turned out,has two smaller companions. One at the nothern polar circle and a third one at about a quarter rotation from the colossal one,in the same equatorial latitude.

If current assumptions on Pluto's dimensions hold true,the mountain, accordingly measures close to 500km in height and 1022 km in length at the base.The only other surface feature to remotely compare with this is Mars's Olympus Mons with 24Km in height.That's 20 times smaller.

If Pluto was demoted to dwarf planethood in 2006, here is Pluto's full fledge vindication in 2011.

The gigantic mountain on Pluto's equator is on a scale that blows away any previous Solar System parameters.

Its sheer height, 473km, makes Olympus Mons of Mars, former title holder 20 times smaller look like a mullhill. If that mountain was on earth, anyone willing to climb it would need to bring a space suit. At the summit, it would be extremelly difficult to spot commercial airliner jets crisscrossing the air along earth's curvature, 450Km below. Artificial sattelites dashing in orbit would seem like airplanes flying overhead.

The length of the base of the mountain (1022Km) would be equivalent to the distance from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in a straight line.

MEADE 14” LX200 Telescope on Equatorial mount and SBIG ST2K single shot color CCD Camera. Exposure time: 60 seconds in high resolution for Pluto processing done in CCDops, Maxim DL4 and Adobe Photoshop CS.