The Hillary Montes or (less officially, Hillary Mountains) are mountains that reach above the surface of the

dwarf planet A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to p ...

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the S ...

. They are located northwest of

Tenzing Montes The Tenzing Montes (formerly Norgay Montes) are icy mountains near the Hillary Montes that reach up to above the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto, bordering the southwest region of Sputnik Planitia in the south of Tombaugh Regio (or the part ...

in the southwest border area of

Sputnik Planitia Sputnik Planitia , originally Sputnik Planum, is a high-albedo ice-covered basin on Pluto, about in size, named after Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. It constitutes the western lobe of the heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio. Sputnik Pl ...

in the south of

Tombaugh Regio Tombaugh Regio () is the largest bright surface feature of the dwarf planet Pluto. It is just north of the equator, to the northeast of Cthulhu Macula and to the northwest of Krun Macula, which are both dark features. Its western lobe, a -wide ...

(or the part of Tombaugh Regio south of the equator). The Hillary Montes were first viewed by the ''

New Horizons ''New Horizons'' is an Interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research ...

'' spacecraft on 14 July 2015, and announced by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

on 24 July 2015.

Naming

The mountains are named after

Sir Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineering, mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropy, philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa people, Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became th ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

mountaineer Mountaineering or alpinism, is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending tall mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, an ...

, who, along with Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer,

Tenzing Norgay Tenzing Norgay (; ''tendzin norgyé''; perhaps 29 May 1914 – 9 May 1986), born Namgyal Wangdi, and also referred to as Sherpa Tenzing, was a Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer. He was one of the first two people known to reach the su ...

, were the first climbers to reach the summit of the highest peak on

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

Mount Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation (snow heig ...

, on 29 May 1953. On 7 September 2017, the name ''Hillary Montes'' was officially approved together with the names of

and twelve other nearby surface features.

Relative size

The Hillary Montes rise to high from base to peak, about half as high as the

. The Hillary Montes are similar in height to that of the peak of

Mount Fuji , or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest p ...

, the highest mountain in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, above sea level.

Gallery

Videos

Notes

References

External links

NASA Pluto factsheet

NASA Official homepage

{{Pluto Extraterrestrial mountains Surface features of Pluto Edmund Hillary Geography of Pluto Articles containing video clips