2014 MU69 has two nearly-spherical lobes and is a contact binary. The collision between the two lobes happened at a low relative velocity, causing little damage to the resulting object. The "neck" between the lobes contains brighter material which appears to be dust that has settled down the slopes that run towards the point of contact.
[Added BBC link -ed]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 02 2019, @11:23PM (3 children)
I subbed it during the live press conference.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 02 2019, @11:40PM (1 child)
I can appreciate the haste and how that'd lead to the lack of links, but you could have mentioned the context that there was a press release. Sorry if I'm being demanding, I know subbing is not paid work or anything. But it seemed particularly low quality this time.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Thursday January 03 2019, @12:09AM
I rather applaud timely reporting, it isn't often I read something first on SN.
Given that the first image from the flyby was already on the frontpage, I was eagerly awaiting this nicer photo, I wasn't personally lacking context. Without that context it would have been confusing as hell.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pkrasimirov on Thursday January 03 2019, @12:14AM
We need a mod +1 Thank you.