MacMusic  |  PcMusic  |  440 Software  |  440 Forums  |  440TV  |  Zicos
solar
Search

NASA probe finds a snowman-shaped relic of the early Solar System

Wednesday January 2, 2019. 11:55 PM , from Ars Technica
NASA YV/YouTube


After the New Horizons mission zoomed by the then-unknown Ultima Thule object in the outer Solar System early on New Year's Day, the spacecraft began returning data to Earth via a deep-space network. Although only about 1 percent of that data is now on the ground, scientists were able to share some top-line findings on Wednesday.
What they have found at a distance of 44 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, or 44 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, is something of a wonderland. The Ultima Thule object, formally named 2014 MU69, is a 33km-long contact binary that somewhat resembles a snowman. Each of the two components is nearly spherical, coming together at a 'neck,' and this has proved important to confirming scientific ideas for how the planets and moons of the Solar System formed. Overall, the object has a reddish hue, similar to the north pole of Pluto's moon Charon.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1435119
News copyright owned by their original publishers | Copyright © 2004 - 2024 Zicos / 440Network
Current Date
Nov, Fri 1 - 04:28 CET