At a distance of 71 million miles, Pluto and its moon Charon appear to NASA's New Horizons spacecraft like an eye doctor's chart does to someone with poor eyesight.

But the newly released images of the furthest planet in the solar system and its largest moon herald the coming of what will be a historic rendezvouses. The images are also the first to show the two in color.

They were captured April 9 in a NASA release that described Charon as "Texas sized" and Pluto as being "a few miles across.