During a news briefing at the Johns Hopkins Applied¹ Physics Laboratory on Tuesday, NASA scientists revealed what they've gleaned² from the latest photos of Pluto³. The New Horizons spacecraft⁴ was set to make its closest approach of the dwarf⁵ planet on Tuesday, and while scientists wait for confirmation⁶ of that flyby -- and the 16 months worth of data that it will bring.

周二，约翰霍普金斯应用物理实验室举行的发布会上，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的科学家透露，他们已收集到来自冥王星的最新图像。按计划设定，新视野号飞行探测器会在周二近距离飞掠这颗矮行星，届时将向在地面等待确认飞掠的科学家传回历时16个月所收集到的数据。

Remember Pluto's heart?

还记得冥王星的心吗？

Well, it's broken.

好吧，它的心已碎。

What you're looking at is an image of Pluto with heavily exaggerated color data -- like when you amp up the saturation⁷ on an Instagram. It's a bit hard to see (sorry) but one side of the "heart" is much bluer than the other. In fact, the left-hand side seems pretty beige-y.

你所看到的冥王星图像，附带有极度夸张的色彩数据，就像你在Instagram（一款图片分享应用）上放大图片的色彩饱和度那样。图片让人看起来（抱歉~）有点儿费力，但你还是能看到这颗“心”的一边要比另一边蓝得多。实际上看，左边的部分看起来更偏于米黄色。

This seems to confirm something that the NASA scientists suspected based on recent photos of the "heart" feature: It's actually two features. In the latest images, it looks like the left half of the heart is smoother than the right, the team said at the briefing. It's possible that some texture⁸ has been lost in the compression of the image, but it could also mean that one side of the heart is a different geological feature than the other -- they're just both very bright, compared with the rest of the surface.

这似乎证实了NASA科学家们基于这颗“心”的近照所作出的猜测，即实际上心有两部分组成。科研团队在简报会上指出，根据最新的图像，似乎这颗“心”的左半边要比右半边平滑的多。很有可能是在图像的压缩过程中丢失了某些质地，但这也有可能意味着，这颗“心”的一边与另一边地质特征存在差异。相对于冥王星表面的其他部分而言，这两部分都很明亮。

And speaking of Pluto's features, NASA scientists are now giving unofficial names to some of the things they've spotted⁹ -- names they can submit to the International Astronomical¹⁰ Union for official approval. They're sticking with the trend of underworld creatures and gods -- Pluto, after all, was the Roman god of the underworld -- and have tentatively named a previously¹¹ observed dark, whale-shaped splotch (just to the left of the broken heart) after "Cthulhu," the dark deity¹² invented by author H.P. Lovecraft.

谈到冥王星的特征，NASA科学家们正准备给一些他们发现到的东西进行非正式命名。他们可以将这些名字递交给国际天文学联合会以获得官方认证。此次命名将延续以往的传统，以阴间神灵命名。毕竟，冥王星就是以罗马神话中掌管阴间的冥王所命名的。科学家们已打算将前不久观察到的一块鲸鱼形深色暗斑区域（就在这颗破碎的“心”的左边），命名为“克苏鲁”（由作家H·P·洛夫卡拉夫特创作的一个邪神）。