This Tiny Blob Is Pluto, NASA Swears

​New Horizons, NASA's nearly-decade-long missio​n to Pluto, has released the first images the shuttle has collected of the dwarf planet in honor of​ the birthday of the man who discovered it. The results are, well, this is it:

But while you might be squinting at your screen trying hard to get excited about a blurry bunch of pixels, keep in mind that the shuttle is still really far away from Pluto. New Horizons was still more than 126 million miles away from Pluto when it started snapping pics (the two photos were taken on January 25 and 27). As it gets closer, the images are naturally going to get much better.

At least better than the best we have of the planet so far, which are from the Hubble Telescope:

But if you were hoping for a little more detailed images of our former ninth planet, you just need to wait a little longer. New Horizons is still mor​e than three months away from being close enough to capture images better than Hubble and more than five months away from actually reaching its closest approach of Pluto, when we will get the best images and data. Considering we've waiting almost ten years for this, what's another few months?