{"id":18200,"date":"2019-01-03T17:57:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T09:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-horizons-probe-delivers-3-d-views-of-cosmic-snowman-plus-mysteries-to-solve\/"},"modified":"2019-01-03T17:57:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T09:57:01","slug":"new-horizons-probe-delivers-3-d-views-of-cosmic-snowman-plus-mysteries-to-solve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-horizons-probe-delivers-3-d-views-of-cosmic-snowman-plus-mysteries-to-solve\/","title":{"rendered":"New Horizons probe delivers 3-D views of cosmic snowman, plus mysteries to solve"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"3-D
This first 3-D view of the icy Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69 or Ultima Thule is best seen using red-blue glasses. Click on the image for a larger view. (NASA \/ JHU \/ SwRI via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LAUREL, Md. \u2014 The science team behind NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft today released the first 3-D image of an icy object more than 4 billion miles from Earth, and the variations in the picture hint at ridges, craters and knobby features that will be more fully charted as the resolution improves.<\/p>\n

Two pictures, separated by just a moment in time, were fused together to produce a somewhat fuzzy but depth-enabled glimpse at the object \u2014 which has the official designation of 2014 MU69 but has been nicknamed Ultima Thule by the New Horizon team.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeatures appear to be rotating into view as the object twists underneath us,\u201d Paul Schenk, a New Horizons co-investigator from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said during today\u2019s briefing here at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory. \u201cThese have a knobby appearance, and could be the inside of a large impact crater that\u2019s on the far side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stereo view also appears to highlight ridge structures on the 19-mile-long object, which has been compared in appearance to a snowman or the BB-8 droid from \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Some of the ridges could represent elevation variations amounting to several hundred feet, he said.<\/p>\n

Schenk said a side-by-side version of the 3-D images was created by Brian May, an astrophysicist specializing in scientific stereoscopy who also happens to be the lead guitarist for the classic rock group Queen.<\/p>\n

\"Side-by-side
This side-by-side stereo imagery of Ultima Thule is meant to be seen through a double-lens 3-D viewer, or by crossing your eyes. Click on the image for a larger version.. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Horizons\u2019 researchers emphasized that their findings were still highly tentative, coming only three days after New Horizons zoomed past Ultima Thule at 32,000 mph, at a distance as close as 2,200 miles.<\/p>\n

The mission\u2019s principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, said the piano-sized spacecraft has already gone 3 million miles beyond Ultima, blazing a trail through a sparsely populated, icy zone of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

Today the probe made its final observations looking back at the environment around Ultima Thule, a Latin term that signifies \u201ca place beyond the known world,\u201d and turned its instruments to the unknown worlds ahead, Stern said. He said data transmissions back to Earth will be suspended for several days due to solar interference, and resume on Jan. 10.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll take 20 months to downlink several gigabytes\u2019 worth of data from the close flyby on the night of Dec. 31-Jan. 1, due to New Horizons\u2019 limited transmission capability and the extreme distances involved.<\/p>\n

The Ultima encounter is the latest chapter in a saga that began with New Horizons\u2019 launched in 2006 and reached a crescendo in 2015 when the probe flew past Pluto. Even before the Pluto flyby, the mission team identified 2014 MU69 \u2014 a billion miles beyond Pluto \u2014 as a worthy follow-up target. Part of the reason for looking ahead now could well be to identify yet another Kuiper Belt object for close study.<\/p>\n

Along the way, New Horizons\u2019 instruments will continue to sample the solar wind and particle flux in the solar system\u2019s least-explored zone.<\/p>\n