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Title    New Horizons Target 2014 MU69 May be a "Contact Binary"
Date    Wednesday August 09 2017, @07:41PM
Author    Fnord666
Topic   
from the or-just-an-extreme-prolate-spheroid dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/08/09/0011253

takyon writes:

2014 MU69, which New Horizons will fly by on January 1, 2019, appears to have an elongated shape or may be comprised of two objects:

Based on the occultation data, 2014 MU69 definitely appears to have an odd shape. In a press release, NASA officials said that it's either football shaped or a type of object called a contact binary. The size of MU69 or its components also can be determined from these data. It appears to be no more than 20 miles (30 km) long, or, if a binary, each about 9-12 miles (15-20 km) in diameter.

By comparison, Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko consists of a large lobe measuring about 4.1 × 3.3 × 1.8 km and a small lobe of about 2.6 × 2.3 × 1.8 km.

Original Submission

Links
  1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
  2. "2014 MU69" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(486958)_2014_MU69
  3. "an elongated shape or may be comprised of two objects" - http://earthsky.org/space/2014-mu69-new-horizons-occulations-2017-contact-binary
  4. "Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko
  5. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=21654
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