EST translate to your time zone).īest New Year’s gift ever! EarthSky moon calendar for 2019 New Horizons swept past Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt on January 1, 2019, at 06:33 UTC (12:33 a.m. The team says that the two spheres likely joined as early as 99 percent of the way back to the formation of the solar system, colliding no faster than two cars in a fender-bender. The team has dubbed the larger sphere Ultima (12 miles/19 km across) and the smaller sphere Thule (9 miles/14 km across). End to end, this little world is now known to measure 19 miles (31 km) in length, the science team said. They reveal Ultima Thule to be a “contact binary,” consisting of two connected spheres. New Horizons captured the images from as close as 17,000 miles (27,000 km) on approach. (How to pronounce Ultima Thule: UL-ti-ma THOO-lee.) It’s the most distant object yet visited – and the only Kuiper Belt object yet seen – by an earthly spacecraft. Scientists have now released a more detailed image of Ultima Thule, the Kuiper Belt object visited by the New Horizons spacecraft on New Year’s Day 2019. The spacecraft captured it at 05:01 UTC on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach, from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 km). Here’s the most detailed image so far of Ultima Thule – a Kuiper Belt object, some 4 billion miles from our sun – via New Horizons.
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