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posted by martyb on Friday January 18 2019, @04:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-Ultima-Thule-for-a-spin dept.

New Movie Shows Ultima Thule from an Approaching New Horizons

This movie shows the propeller-like rotation of Ultima Thule in the seven hours between 20:00 UT (3 p.m. ET) on Dec. 31, 2018, and 05:01 UT (12:01 a.m.) on Jan. 1, 2019, as seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons as the spacecraft sped toward its close encounter with the Kuiper Belt object at 05:33 UT (12:33 a.m. ET) on Jan. 1.

The images, which cover about a half of a rotation, help illustrate the solution to Ultima Thule's apparent lack of brightness variations:

The brief video also shows why New Horizons didn't detect any brightness variations from Ultima Thule during the approach phase, a surprising development that initially puzzled the mission team. The lack of such a "light curve" is expected for spherical objects, which don't shift from a viewer's perspective as they rotate, but early data indicated that the 21-mile-long (34 km) Ultima Thule was highly elongated.

As we can now see, it was all about New Horizons' orientation to Ultima Thule. The object's pole of rotation was pointing directly at the approaching spacecraft, so New Horizons didn't see any appreciable changes in the light bouncing off Ultima Thule.

Previously: New Horizons Survives Flyby, Begins Sending Back Data
New Images Reveal Structure, Color, and Features of 2014 MU69 (Ultima Thule)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @12:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @12:03AM (#788472)

    Do you mean BMP format? That takes up a lot of space. Non-compressed PNG may be a better option; it has an option of non-lossy compression.

    At this stage, hosting storage space may not be a significant issue, but there are a lot more photos to come. If you plan ahead, then BMP probably wouldn't be the best choice.

    Incidentally, I heard elsewhere they expect the "close up" photos to arrive roughly around the end of February.