Posted on 01/02/2019 1:24:00 PM PST by Simon Green
Humanity has captured its first clear look at an object in the faraway Kuiper Belt.
NASA revealed the first images and science data from this week's historic flyby in a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Far from the blurry 'bowling pin' we saw with New Horizons' first look when it beamed its signal home early morning on January 1, the new images reveal Ultima Thule is snowman-shaped red world with two distinct lobes - one stacked atop the other.
This arrangement is what's known as a contact binary, the experts say – and, it’s now the first a spacecraft has ever explored.
Photographing Ultima Thule – and traveling more than four billion miles through space to get there – is a ‘technical success beyond anything ever attempted before in spaceflight,’ Principal Investigator Alan Stern said in a press conference Wednesday.
'It's really only the size of Washington D.C., and about as reflective as garden variety dirt,' Stern explained, noting that the object wasn't even known to the world prior to the summer of 2014.
'We were ultimately chasing it down in the dark at 32,000 miles per hour.'
The best images of the new batch were captured when New Horizons was about 17,000 miles (27, 000 kilometers) from Ultima Thule.
And, the pictures will only get better from here.
The scientists say the two lobes of Ultima Thule came together in a 'gentle' accretion process, with two objects bound together by each other's gravity.
The primitive world was 'born' this way, and did not evolve or deform through external processes to take on the strange shape, the team explains.
'New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system,'said Jeff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team lead.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
That’s a mighty fine opus. I congratulate you. You flamed out in a truly spectacular fashion.
I’ve not seen a farewell opus like that in a long long time.
My hats off you you. You barking moonbat troll.
Sooooo... You said NASA is lying to us?
Last time I heard that from someone, they were claiming we were all gonna die from comet Elenin/Ison/asteroid yu55.
They also kept claiming bpearthwatch was telling the “TRUTH!™®©”
See what you think.
Thanks for the callout. That idiot is zotted as well.
[Ultima Thule]
As I said before, she was great in “Gattaca”.
Oh, stop it. We all know earthquakes are caused because American womens fashion shows too much breastage. Our imams told us so...
Thank you again.
Although the zot(s) have deprived me of a certain amount of entertainment, I’m sure I will survive.. ;-)
It does, two faces.
I can just imagine the "alien conspiracy" folks will love this and are feverishly devising profitable ways of exploiting it. ;)
“obviously it’s comet elenin coming back to kill us! We will be pulled into its immense gravity well as earthquake swarms increase and the poles shift three degrees!!1!”
Was just reading some threads from 2011 and 2013 when some were telling us we we’re all gonna die due to comets.
Not any more: "this account has been banned or suspended". Looks like this subject (not thread) netted a twofer.
LOL! I had to look that up, wondering what the BP Gulf oil blowout/spill CYA cleanup people had to do with anything.
Oh yeah, and the photos will be interesting, if not beautiful, once they begin to arrive.
It was quite.... interesting back then.
Supposed electrician BPearthwatch claimed he knew “information that NASA is trying to hide”, claimed some massive overarching conspiracy that only he uncovered, and that a secret base in Dulce had a subterranean war between reptoid brothers.
He partnered with pseudo-pastor Paul Begley for awhile.
And when we failed to die by comets, he just went on to other things that were going to kill us somehow.
The threads got amusing.
Was reminded of them by this.
Lol.
But still, be ever watchful of that British Petroleum!
;-)
Thanks Simon Green.
The "snowman" completes a full rotation every 15 hours. © NASA/JHU-APL/SWRI
It’s also: Not My Fault™®©
;-)
Looks like a bust of the Pillsbury dough boy wearing a chef’s hat...
Maybe, maybe not. There's a great deal of geologic evidence that points to the fact that Earth has suffered major bombardments from asteroids or comets before.
It's even theorized that one of those heavy bombardments ended the last ice age.
I still say that’s some fine welding there. Union work?
That little chunk of rock is turning out to be interesting.
As clear as the image is from so far away, I can’t wait for the shots up close.
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