We now have a new, higher-resolution image of Ultima Thule! It isn’t yet on the NASA site, as far as I can tell, but the release came out late yesterday through the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, or JHU APL.
People may have forgotten about Ultima Thule a little, with all the other odd objects in the news, but we’re entering a phase where we’re going to start getting clearer and clearer images back, like we did from Pluto.
I won’t try to paraphrase what the APL said, because they know much more about this than I do, and they were pretty succinct about it:
Obtained with the wide-angle Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) component of New Horizons' Ralph instrument, this image was taken when the KBO was 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) from the spacecraft, at 05:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1 – just seven minutes before closest approach. With an original resolution of 440 feet (135 meters) per pixel, the image was stored in the spacecraft's data memory and transmitted to Earth on Jan. 18-19. Scientists then sharpened the image to enhance fine detail. (This process – known as deconvolution – also amplifies the graininess of the image when viewed at high contrast.)
The oblique lighting of this image reveals new topographic details along the day/night boundary, or terminator, near the top. These details include numerous small pits up to about 0.4 miles (0.7 kilometers) in diameter.
The large circular feature, about 4 miles (7 kilometers) across, on the smaller of the two lobes, also appears to be a deep depression. Not clear is whether these pits are impact craters or features resulting from other processes, such as "collapse pits" or the ancient venting of volatile materials.
Both lobes also show many intriguing light and dark patterns of unknown origin, which may reveal clues about how this body was assembled during the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. One of the most striking of these is the bright "collar" separating the two lobes.
"This new image is starting to reveal differences in the geologic character of the two lobes of Ultima Thule, and is presenting us with new mysteries as well," said Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Over the next month there will be better color and better resolution images that we hope will help unravel the many mysteries of Ultima Thule."
One thing I can add is that the best resolution is supposed to get down to 35 meters per pixel, compared to 135 meters per pixel for this one.
I’m also wondering about that ring on the larger lobe, which makes it seem like an extra glob of material got smooshed into there like Play-Doh at some point:
A little more perspective from Alan Stern, the project PI, from about a week ago about what to expect going forward:
So far New Horizons has returned just 1% of all the data it gathered on Ultima Thule. It will send the rest over the next 20 months; but even by late February we'll have far more detailed geologic, color and stereo images than we have now. We'll also have more information on UT's shape and composition, and better constraints on (or maybe even detections of) moons, rings and an atmosphere.
And if that wasn't enough, New Horizons had already resumed observing distant KBOs as well as the radiation, gas and dust environment as it pushes farther into the Kuiper Belt. Notably, in March, we'll look at a KBO called 2014 PN70 — which was one of our alternate flyby targets to Ultima Thule. Don't expect PN70 to be more than a dot in those images, but they should yield valuable information on the object's rotation period, surface properties, shape and any satellites — which we'll compare to Ultima Thule.
So, we’ll wait for more indictments…
...but we’ll also wait for more great images from out in the Kuiper Belt!