The former ninth planet and its moons continue to unveil their secrets to scientists. In the newest revelation, researchers have discovered that Pluto is a “real world” of its own.

“These five detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto - revealing the former ‘astronomer’s planet’ to be a real world with diverse and active geology, exotic surface chemistry, a complex atmosphere, puzzling interaction with the sun and intriguing system of small moons,” said NASA New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.

New Horizons scientists made the discovery after a 9.5-year, 3-billion-mile journey that sent their spacecraft past Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA reports. Seven science instruments collected about 50 gigabits of data.

The first of the photos showed a large heart shape carved into Pluto’s surface. To scientists, it showed that this “new” type of planetary world would be even more interesting and mystifying than they thought.

(MORE: Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto)

“Observing Pluto and Charon up close has caused us to completely reassess thinking on what sort of geological activity can be sustained on isolated planetary bodies in this distant region of the solar system, worlds that formerly had been thought to be relics little changed since the Kuiper Belt’s formation,” said Jeff Moore, lead author of the geology paper from NASA's Ames Research Center.

The scientists’ findings were published in the journal Science, stating that Pluto’s moon Charon has a similarly complex surface with numerous relief structures and varying color patterns, and that Pluto’s atmosphere is less dense than anticipated. Charon, on the other hand, has no detectable atmosphere.

Researchers believe the dwarf planet’s diverse landscape is the result of “eons of interaction between highly volatile and mobile methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide ices with inert and sturdy water ice,” according to NASA.

This image was taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the morning of July 13, 2015. It provides fascinating new details to help scientists map the informally named Krun Macula (the prominent dark spot at the bottom of the image) and the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto’s “heart” (Tombaugh Regio). Pluto’s north pole is on the planet’s disk at the 12 o’clock position of this image.

(NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

“We see variations in the distribution of Pluto's volatile ices that point to fascinating cycles of evaporation and condensation,” said Will Grundy, lead author of the composition paper. “These cycles are a lot richer than those on Earth, where there's really only one material that condenses and evaporates – water. On Pluto, there are at least three materials, and while they interact in ways we don't yet fully understand, we definitely see their effects all across Pluto's surface.”

Scientists discovered that Pluto’s atmosphere holds layered hazes, and is both cooler and more compact than previously thought, NASA reports. They also took a closer look at Pluto’s small moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra, and found that they have “highly anomalous rotation rates and uniformly unusual pole orientations,” as well as icy surfaces with brightness and colors much different than either Pluto’s or Charon’s.

(MORE:NASA Spots Mysterious 'Snail' Crawling Across Pluto's Surface)

They also found that some of the moons were created as a result of even smaller planetary bodies merging together, and that their surface ages date back at least 4 billion years.

“These latter two results reinforce the hypothesis that the small moons formed in the aftermath of a collision that produced the Pluto-Charon binary system,” said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist and lead author of the paper on Pluto’s small moons.

“This is why we explore,” said New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur. “The many discoveries from New Horizons represent the best of humankind and inspire us to continue the journey of exploration to the solar system and beyond.”

Scientists determined that Pluto is not a planet in 2006, bringing the count of planets in the solar system down to eight, National Geographic reported. It was rechristened a "dwarf planet" when scientists decided the new definition of a planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity.

It also requires the planet to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit, which Pluto does not do.

This image shows haze layers above Pluto’s limb. About 20 haze layers are seen; the layers have been found to typically extend horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but are not strictly parallel to the surface. For example, scientists note a haze layer about 3 miles (above the surface (lower left area of the image), which descends to the surface at the right.