Nomenclature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule
New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#62That is amazing. It reminds me of a snowman or two snowballs frozen together, except it's red not white. As seen in the combined image. http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/pics800wid...
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a more detailed summary of the amazing collaborations necessary and challenges faced, Scott Manley: https://youtu.be/ymJRlUQfPfQ
They actually managed to predict the bi-lobed shape by keeping track of when the shadow of the object swept different points on the Earth’s surface. Amazing.
I watched that video and when the pictures finally came out i was completely floored by how accurately they were able to predict the shape. An incredible problem solving strategy that seems very simple in hindsight.
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#64Fantastic. Just one thing: it would be great if NASA dropped imperial units as main units in such articles.
I agree. However, the people that are paying for this mission still use imperial units. Those of them that are paying the most attention would probably agree with us though.
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#65"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." Welded together by gravity, i'm really in awe seeing the, by far, weakest power so lovely at work.
So, two masses were close enough in relative velocity and vector, that one of them didn't careen off the other one, and instead, allowed the weakest of all known forces to bond them together as they hurtled at high velocity through space. This object(s) seem statistically unlikely to me. I'm not saying it's artificial. That would be even more unlikely, by orders of magnitude. Just saying "Wow!".
It doesn’t seem unlikely to me. There are many many approach paths that would result in two similar sized objects ending up orbiting each other.
Once they are orbiting each other then it’s just a matter of time for the orbits to decay. In the final, they would be spinning very very fast but would be inching towards each other until they touch.
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#66I find it truly amazing that New Horizons was able to take photos of a 20 mile object whilst flying past at ~8 miles/sec - that’s an incredibly small space and time window within which to capture the images. Does anyone know how NASA manages to pilot spacecraft with this level of precision? What kind of engineering processes do you need to enable this?
In the press conference they said that the spacecraft tried to take one megapixel image of Ultima Thule one hour after this image. Interesting to see it in couple months.
It will be a giant blurry thumb, just like my vacation photos. Except maybe green and glowing this time.
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#67Can a human jump off of Ultima Thule?
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#68I find it truly amazing that New Horizons was able to take photos of a 20 mile object whilst flying past at ~8 miles/sec - that’s an incredibly small space and time window within which to capture the images. Does anyone know how NASA manages to pilot spacecraft with this level of precision? What kind of engineering processes do you need to enable this?
Not to mention seeing it in practically pitch black darkness
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually doing the fly-by is less impressive (the fly-by was planned and programmed a while ago) than the fact that we were able to line up Horizons to an object like this at all! https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674
I find it more impressive and awe inspiring that stuff in space is so predictable that we can actually program the fly by such a long time in advance and get such a high degree of accuracy.
My understanding was that the exact position was known within a few hundred miles of precision using both Hubble and the NH's cameras.
Re: New Horizons’ first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule
#70Can a human jump off of Ultima Thule? https://xkcd.com/681_large/
Probably not, from the approximate sizes noted in the article it sounds like Ultima Thule is a bit bigger than Diemos, which XCKD says you could escape with a bicycle and a ramp.
And just for fun, I also worked out a best guess for the force between the two "lobes": 1.5 x 10^13 N (assuming Ultima Thule is the same density as our Moon), which is about equal to the (Earth) weight of all the ships in the world. [0]