Space Weather

[thelufias]

I totally agree.....the time frame to get a signal back was something else...as you said...can't wait to see what they show us next....AMAZING stuff....

BBC had this as the headline....and it was pretty concise which I like....typically I avoid all the newsfeeds until my 2nd pot of   That way I don't get to worked up since I'm already hyper by then   

[sidherose]

Eh, there are always reasons to get hyper even without coffee

[thelufias]

LOLOL.....Yes....I just read it.....  Sigh .......  Like having a overgrown 2 year old in our mix.

[sidherose]

LOLOL.....Yes....I just read it.....  Sigh .......  Like having a overgrown 2 year old in our mix.

Verily.

[sidherose]

I'm betting that tomorrow morning we'll see a Jupiter/Moon conjunction. That ought to be pretty cool.

[thelufias]

Not sure what we'll see here....Today is Clear....with snow and sleet....  Not kidding....that's what the local channel said a minute ago while I was channel surfing.... 

Weather Channel was right on once again...so they are saying cloudy tonight...slight chance of snow or sleet....

[sidherose]

Tomorrow a little after you get home from taking Lorna to work look for it in the SE sky. Maybe there'll be a 'hole in the clouds'.

It's a thumbnail moon. I've only ever seen that twice before in my life. Those were both late at night. Maybe I wasn't looking all the time I should have been but it is a lovely sight! 

[Jherrith]

NEW HORIZONS SCIENCE BRIEFING: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew past Ultima Thule on Jan. 1st, giving researchers their first look at the mysterious object 4 billion miles from Earth. Just one problem: Ultima Thule is so far away, it takes 6 hours for radio signals to travel back to mission control. That's why the first high-res images are being revealed only today. Tune into NASA TV to watch a science briefing at 2 pm EST.


FIRST IMAGES OF ULTIMA THULE: The first high-resolution images of Ultima Thule have reached Earth following New Horizons' historic flyby on New Year's Day. Hot off the presses, the photos reveal a pair of roughly spherical planetestimals stuck together in the middle. The contact binary strangely resembles BB-8:






"This flyby is a historic achievement," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Never before has any spacecraft team tracked down such a small body so far away in the abyss of space. We're getting our first close-up look at ancient planetesimals."

Planetestimals are the building blocks of planets. Here in the inner solar system, no pristine examples remain for us to study. They have been swallowed by planets, hammered by asteroids, and scorched by solar radiation. Ultima Thule, however, has been preserved in the deep freeze of the outer solar system for more than 4 billion years. It is truly a relic of the genesis of planets.

Mission scientists believe that Ultima Thule formed by accretion. A swarm of smaller planetesimals gathered under the pull of their own meager gravity to form two spherical bodies, medium-sized planetesimals which themselves slowly bumped together and stuck. The result was Ultima Thule.






This is just the beginning of Ultima Thule's revelations. First images released today have a resolution of about 140 meters per pixel. Images arriving in the days and weeks ahead will be as much as 5 times sharper, possibly revealing craters, hills, landslides, rilles and other unknowns.

New Horizons also scanned the area for tiny moons--the debris of the original swarm that gave birth to this strange object. Detection's, if any, will be revealed in future transmissions from the spacecraft. Stay tuned!

[sidherose]

Excuse me whilst I There are comets that look like that, which they'd like to ignore because they are NOT 'dirty snowballs'.


Hartley 2

[sidherose]

Comet 67P ('Chury')