My guess is that a lot of medium-sized bodies will turn out to be peanut-shaped like this, possibly with very different makeup of the lobes with different origins. Itokawa, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Ultima Thule...

Ummm like evident contact object; no binary distant

Judging from what Alan Stern posted on FB, the press conference later today is probably going to be really interesting.

Judging from Roman's processing, it looks like the neck is quite a bit darker than the two lobes, especially looking at that last image. Could be a roughness affect, neck smoother (mostly dust) while the lobes are rougher.

I remember the Hartley comet form:

. .

Quote? Link? I'm not finding his profile via google or people search on facebook, and the link from "contact" on his personal .space domain does not work.

Alan Stern Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/s.alan.stern

I just get "Page Not Found" - same link that's on his site. That's fine, I can wait for the press conference.

I got it OK from that link. This is Alan's intriguing message :

" Planetary science fans-- I think you definitely want to tune in to our press conference about Ultima Thule today, 2 pm Eastern. Just one thing, before you do, fasten your seat belts! "

What did you expect him to say? I'm sure it will be interesting, but I wouldn't read much into this.

Well, he certainly disappoint with Pluto... sure, there was hype, but it was well warranted. Based on his post, I'm expecting at least something quite "unexpected" / "out of the ordinary".

Ummm... Yeah...
They're Spaceballs...
They're twirling Spaceballs.... (I assume this is funnier in Italian)



-Voiceover-
The unexpected collaboration between Alan Stern and Mel Brooks.....
Behold the twiriling spaceballs, Skroob and Yogurt

I agree with you.


I hope so..

To somewhat nail down the illuminance in lux we can start with the solar constant of 1360 W/m^2 at 1AU. This is 0.85 W/m^2 at 40AU (dividing by 1600). For a solar spectrum we can convert the irradiance (W/m^2) to illuminance (lux) dividing again by .0079. This works out to about 108 lux at UT.

A similar calculation for an Earthly full moon (1/400000 of the sun at 1AU) is 0.43 lux.

On second thought, a better choice for the voiceover-
Here, in a world where the sun burns cold, and the wind blows colder, a visitor has come..."
-Don LaFontaine(1940-2008) theatrical voiceover for Alien 3

Pluto results were mostly unexpected and so much over expectations... think about the pristin nitrogen ice cap of Spunik planitia, with its convection cells and water icebergs.. Add a heart and the hazy atmosphere... It was just amazing.

Exactly. I can't imagine this coming even close to beating that. But there may still be some neat surprises in store.

Alan you sneaky PI!

https://twitter.com/AlanStern/status/1080515566518104065

Hint: the monitor in the 1st image...

Just stirring up excitement with 45 minutes to go, but I'm supposing that "fasten your seatbelts" might be saying something about the asteroid and parts of it being in a state of [near] escape rather than (solely) about our emotional states.

Well, it really is impossible to tell what this is. Could be an enlarged view of UT but might also be something else.

And regarding the FB post I mentioned earlier (and which generated some discussion here), I simply took it to imply that at least they have interesting data and which also would mean that the instrument pointing was correct. Of course (given the "phone home" telemetry) this was very likely to be the case - after all these are not the highest resolution images/data.

But the main thing is that I'm excited and eagerly waiting to watch to press conference that starts in 35 minutes

eheh yea.. balle spaziali

Anyone got a link to the press briefing? It should start in 10 minutes, but nothing available on the NASA youtube channel yet.

Here are scientific papers available before the flyby:

High-Precision Orbit Fitting and Uncertainty Analysis of (486958) 2014 MU69 (Locating Ultima Thule - The Planetary Mechanics Blog)
Probing the Hill Sphere of (486958) 2014 MU69: HST FGS Observations During the July 17, 2017 Stellar Occultation
The New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission
Great Expectations: Plans and Predictions for New Horizons Encounter with Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 (‘Ultima Thule’)
The Color and Binarity of (486958) 2014 MU69 and Other Long-Range New Horizons Kuiper Belt Targets
The HST Lightcurve of (486958) 2014 MU69
Crater Density Predictions for New Horizons flyby target 2014 MU69

How close were all the predictions? How many papers will come up during 2019?

Intro graphic just showed up on NASA TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg

I see it here: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

Live now.

I find it mildly amusing that I'm watching this from the real Ultima Thule (Iceland)

Contact binary!

Wow, this is a really weird object...

Wow - so it really was a contact binary - believe that's another first for a probe!

You're not the only one

Interesting that there are no obvious impact craters - though perhaps some smaller ones will become more apparent as the angle of sunlight changes in the images.

"No obvious impact craters" - huh...

The hi-res shots will probably show some, but not many. Think we're looking at two icy planetesimals that got starved out before they ever encountered others.

As was mentioned at the press conference, it's going to be especially interesting to see images where the illumination is different and shadows are visible.

Even in the Kuiper Belt, collisions occur. Look at Pluto.

Perhaps sublimation-driven snow could be burying them? ED: No, that shouldn't work. Surely it has no more than the faintest of exospheres, so sublimed ices should just escape.... exosphere = collisions are statistically rare = particle aggregation is rare.

This makes the results of the occultation experiments all the more extraordinary

Taking a step back, this is absolutely awesome stuff:)

Thinking once in a lifetime.

Quick and dirty color composite of the highest published resolution image from LORRI colorized by RALPH color.

Congratulations to the New Horizons team for another great flyby!

Pluto's in a different class entirely in many ways since it likely had some sort of dynamic interaction with (at least) Neptune in the distant past, the system itself shows abundant evidence of relatively large-scale collisional events, and of course it's got a lot more surface area to take hits. Cold classical KBOs like UT may be considerably less cratered.

A first processing between the best image released in black and white and color...
It seems to see a crater in the lower left corner on the lobe Ultima!!

FANTASTIC!

Edit: Image V2

They just talked about craters, but I didn't quite catch whether he was saying that the low level of cratering should be expected or not....

I guess we'll find out when they get a better crater count.

Yes : So primitive too
CONGRATULATIONS to the NH team for this incredible feat

There were two discussions - one basically said that a low rate of cratering is expected in for Ultima Thule considering its location in the Kuiper Belt versus the classic Asteroid Belt objects, and another caveat from Alan Stern that the lighting was such that craters would not be apparent, not that they aren't there - and that will change as they get images that were taken later in the flyby.

I think he said the theoretical cratering rate there was generally pretty low, so to see few craters would not be unexpected.

How much fun would it be to stand at the junction between the two components and push them apart?

Yeah, it would be fun... but you might need a pretty big crowbar!

I am reminded of Robert Forward's 'Rocheworld', though clearly much less symmetrical.

Stereo views from NYT1 and 2. Quite noisy, but we are seeing some subtle stereo, especially in the smaller ball (Thule).

Cross-eyed:
Click to view attachment
and anaglyph:
Click to view attachment

Successful Ultima Thule flyby, OSIRIS-REx enters orbit around Bennu, Chang'e 4 about to land on the lunar farside. Just another ho-hum week in space exploration.

Denoised version with more subtle colors.