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    Ultima Thule tagged posts

    NASA’s New Horizons Mission reveals entirely new kind of world

    January 4, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    three views of the object showing how color data was overlaid on a higher resolution view to create the color view
    The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object.
    Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
    Published: January 2, 2019
    Historical Date: January 1,...
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    New Horizons Successfully explores Ultima Thule

    January 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    At left is a composite of two images taken by New Horizons’ high-resolution Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which provides the best indication of Ultima Thule’s size and shape so far. Preliminary measurements of this Kuiper Belt object suggest it is approximately 20 miles long by 10 miles wide (32 kilometers by 16 kilometers). An artist’s impression at right illustrates one possible appearance of Ultima Thule, based on the actual image at left. The direction of Ultima’s spin axis is indicated by the arrows.
    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane

    NASA spacecraft reaches most distant target in history...

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    NASA Spaceship Zooms toward Farthest World ever Photographed

    January 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist's illustration obtained from NASA on December 21, 2018 shows the New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69 – ni

    This artist’s illustration obtained from NASA on December 21, 2018 shows the New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69 – nicknamed “Ultima Thule” – a Kuiper Belt object that orbits one billion miles beyond Pluto

    A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The US space agency rang in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 am January 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday).

    A guitar anthem recorded by legendary Queen guitarist Brian May—who also holds an advanced degree in astrophysics—was released just aft...

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    After Pluto, New Horizons mission nears an Object ‘beyond the known world’

    December 27, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Three and a half years after giving humanity its first close-up view of Pluto, and almost 13 years after launching from Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft will explore another new frontier: a reddish hunk of rock and ice known as Ultima Thule.

    The object—or, perhaps, pair of objects (it’s so far away astronomers aren’t sure) – is thought to be a pristine remnant of the early solar system, untouched for billions of years. Its nickname conveys its significance, meaning “beyond the known world.”

    Ultima Thule is 4 billion miles from Earth. New Horizons will reach it as the new year arrives on Jan. 1, with a mission to collect as many images and as much data as possible while speeding past at 32,000 miles per hour...

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