
New High Resolution Image of Ultima Thule - skunkworker
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?image_id=586
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kmm
Amazing picture. That crater on Thule, the smaller one, is curious, the impact
should have obliterated it. Maybe it's not a crater but a depression left over
from when it was attached to Ultima in a different place, before it rolled
into the current configuration. There's a faint white ring on Ultima in the
right spot.

(I am not at all an astronomer, just guessing)

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hnruss
I had the same thought!

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JKCalhoun
Weird: an asteroid shaped just like Ultima Thule was an important plot point
in an awesome Super-8 (very low budget) film from 1981. Found it on YouTube.
Worth mentioning the computer graphics were done on an Apple ][. Graphics took
time to render one frame but were then photographed stop-motion style.

[https://youtu.be/mPaPe3aJEPI](https://youtu.be/mPaPe3aJEPI)

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poooogles
I've not followed this too much, but is this an intermediate step or can we
expect more detail than this?

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fogleman
Higher resolution images are coming, and some will have better shadows that
will reveal more detail.

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altcognito
Did they capture color or just not enough light for that?

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Splendor
They did capture color. Ultima Thule is red.

[https://www.space.com/42878-ultima-thule-new-horizons-
first-...](https://www.space.com/42878-ultima-thule-new-horizons-first-color-
photo.html)

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Tepix
Nice one. Besides that huge depression on Thule, what's also interesting is
that they must have made contact very gently, possibly after circling each
other for millennia, otherwise the result would look very different.

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johnrogers0
It’s that pillsbury dough boy spaceship from Austin Powers disguised with rock

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endofcapital
Sort of looks like two rocks mashed together, but without quite enough mass to
really round out. I'm sure that's totally wrong but still neat to see.

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flukus
On the big one in particular it looks like you can see the outline of several
other large rocks that come together to form it.

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whatshisface
If the big one and the small one both came together from relatively large
rocks, why would they be smooth but not completely joined together? Whatever
smoothed the small one or the large one should smooth them both together,
unless the large and small ones both started out as smooth because of their
formation from much smaller pebbles.

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pgreenwood
That's no moon.

