{"id":18209,"date":"2018-12-31T23:17:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-horizons-team-gets-first-fuzzy-glimpse-of-elongated-icy-world-on-solar-systems-edge\/"},"modified":"2018-12-31T23:17:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:17:22","slug":"new-horizons-team-gets-first-fuzzy-glimpse-of-elongated-icy-world-on-solar-systems-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-horizons-team-gets-first-fuzzy-glimpse-of-elongated-icy-world-on-solar-systems-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"New Horizons team gets first fuzzy glimpse of elongated icy world on solar system\u2019s edge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ultima
The left image shows a raw, pixel-by-pixel view of an icy object known as Ultima Thule, as captured by NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe at 11:56 a.m. ET Dec. 30 from a distance of 1.2 million miles. (JHUAPL \/ SwRI \/ NASA via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LAUREL, Md. \u2014 The science team for NASA\u2019s New Horizon spacecraft released its first multi-pixel view of an icy world more than 4 billion miles from Earth, and the analysis suggests it\u2019s an elongated space cigar.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it\u2019s not round, we can say that with confidence,\u201d John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the mission\u2019s project scientists, said today during a news briefing scheduled just hours before the probe was due to fly just 2,200 miles past the mysterious object.<\/p>\n

Based on observations made on Earth during stellar occultations, Spencer and other astronomers suspected that the object \u2014 known by its formal designation, 2014 MU69, or by its nickname, Ultima Thule \u2014 might be made of smooshed-together chunks of ice and rock.<\/p>\n

Spencer said the fuzzy image was still consistent with that hypothesis, but scientists will know definitively once better-quality pictures are sent back from the close encounter, which is set to occur at 12:33 a.m. ET on New Year\u2019s Day (9:33 p.m. PT tonight).<\/p>\n

Those pictures won\u2019t be released until later in the week, but even the fuzzy pre-flyby image energized the New Horizons team, said SwRI\u2019s Alan Stern, principal investigator for the mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen so many people excited about two pixels,\u201d Stern quipped.<\/p>\n

\"John
John Spencer, a scientist on the New Horizons team, demonstrates how Ultima Thule may be rotating like a pen in front of the spacecraft\u2019s camera. That would explain why there\u2019s been no noticeable variation in the object\u2019s observed brightness, even though it\u2019s elongated. (NASA via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The image was captured at 11:56 a.m. ET on Sunday, when the probe was still 1.2 million miles away from Ultima Thule (\u201cUl-ti-ma Too-lee\u201d), which is within an icy region of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

Three and a half years ago, the piano-sized New Horizons probe flew past Pluto, which is on the near edge of the Kuiper Belt, at a distance of more than 3 billion miles. After the Pluto reconnaissance mission was concluded, NASA authorized New Horizons to take on an extended mission to study Ultima Thule, which was identified using Hubble Space Telescope imagery during the probe\u2019s cruise toward Pluto.<\/p>\n

The Ultima Thule phase of the mission represents history\u2019s farthest-out encounter with a celestial body, and the first up-close study of a type of mini-world known as a \u201ccold classical\u201d Kuiper Belt object. Cold classicals are thought to rank among the solar system\u2019s most primitive objects, and New Horizons\u2019 encounter could shed more light on the process that led to planetary formation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kuiper Belt is a scientific wonderland,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

Several gigabytes\u2019 worth of imagery and data from the flyby will be stored in New Horizons\u2019 solid-state memory banks, and transmitted back to Earth over the course of 20 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The left image shows a raw, pixel-by-pixel view of an icy object known as Ultima Thule, as captured by NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe at 11:56 a.m. ET Dec. 30 from a distance of 1.2 million miles. (JHUAPL \/ SwRI \/ NASA via YouTube) LAUREL, Md. \u2014 The science team for NASA\u2019s New Horizon spacecraft released […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2337,190,4809,2174,4810,2937],"class_list":["post-18209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2014-mu69","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons-probe","tag-ultima-thule"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}