
New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule - daegloe
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/31/science/new-horizons-ultima-thule-flyby.html
======
myth_buster
I found this thread by Alex Parker very informative and fascinating.

[https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674](https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674)

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raverbashing
I second on the fascinating and informative

And that was only the beginning of that mission

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atg_abhishek
Wow this was an amazingly clear and accessible explanation of their process!

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wazoox
"Thule" was named by the Greek navigator Pytheas from Massalia around 330 BC.
Historians think it refers maybe to the Faeroe islands, Greenland, or more
probably Iceland. From this point the name stuck to refer as the farthest
place in the North, some cold unknown. In medieval times, "Thule" being
Iceland, "Ultima Thule" referred to Greenland.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Actually...

[https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-named-its-next-new-horizons-
ta...](https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-named-its-next-new-horizons-target-
ultima-thule-mythical-land-nazi-844318?amp=1)

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rmdashrfstar
I’ve been working a side project to build a more mobile friendly and scroll
friendly version of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day at
[http://lookupat.space](http://lookupat.space)

The most recent update hopefully makes it a lot more useable with including
both attribution of the work and an explanation of what the picture is about.
As always, there is a link to the original page, and I plan on adding sorting
features soon.

I hope this helps more people get exposed to the beauty of outer space and the
very awe inspiring things humans have done!

~~~
rossdavidh
Awesome page! Any chance it could have a "click here for the next page"
version? Autoload of new content messes with my mouse/browser/head in ways I
don't like. But, otherwise great site!

~~~
rmdashrfstar
I was going for an instagram, infinite-scroll vibe, so a change to paginated
would stray from the original intention a bit. Any particular reason you don’t
like the autoload? I may just have a poor implementation of it. :) Thanks for
checking out the site though, I appreciate it!

~~~
theandrewbailey
Could you make it work without Javascript? Build pagination by default, then
with JS, progressively enhance to infinite scroll. I had to enable JS for your
domain and a few others before anything meaningful appeared. Your content
turned out to be photos, which is something that you do not need JS for!

~~~
rmdashrfstar
You don't need javascript to display photos, but for the functionality of
simulating an "infinity-scroll" where images are fetched based on the position
of the viewport relative to the bottom, I'm not sure how this is
accomplishable without javascript (Javascript considered harmful? :P).

I'm certainly open to the idea of pagination if the agent has javascript
disabled by default, but that would then require paginating 6800+ images and
seems like it would impact performance moreso than the current method of
fetching as the user scrolls (although, there is something to be said about my
hacky implementation of infinity scroll).

I appreciate the feedback!

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Waterluvian
Reading that page in reverse chronological order was kind of humbling; to see
where we came from on a specific subject.

It also reminded me of the astronomy course I took in university that taught
me how much astronomy is about logical deduction. Deducing what must be there
based on orbits and how it obscures light from stars, shadows, etc. And then
going out there and validing all of it. That's beautiful.

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AndrewKemendo
Not sure why it wasn't more prominent, but for anyone else like that was
wondering, "reaches" "zips by" and the other adjectives are indicating a
distance of 2,200 miles.

As a computer vision/imaging person, that's a pretty far look for a 75mm (~3
inch) mirror. It's like trying to take a picture of the Empire State building
in NYC from Las Vegas with a tripod telescope.

~~~
nwallin
LORRI has a 8" primary mirror, not 3. Ralph has a 75mm mirror, but that's the
secondary telescope; it does multispectral photography (6 bands) and infrared
spectrometry.

Even with such a small primary mirror, New Horizons has a number of
advantages. First, Ultima Thule is larger than Manhattan. Not exactly large,
but certainly bigger than the Empire State Building.

Second, the mount is incredibly stable. There are basically no vibrations to
speak of. As an amateur astronomer, I can tell you that the mount is one of
the most important pieces of equipment in astrophotography. A mediocre
telescope on a good mount will give good images. A good telescope on a
mediocre mount will give mediocre images.

Third, the mirror itself is much better designed and manufactured than the
average amateur astronomer's scope. Certainly better than any of mine.

Fourth, the sensor is cooled to very low temperatures, so it is way less noisy
than the average consumer sensor.

Fifth, there is no atmosphere in the way. This is a huge advantage.

When all is said and done, LORRI will have a resolution on Ultima Thule's
surface of about 60 feet. Certainly no Google Earth, but plenty good enough
for the science objects of the flyby.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Ah, didn't know the LORRI was the primary and not the Ralph, thanks. So when
do you think we'll see the LORRI images of Ultima Thule?

My point remains though, and it was just a general metaphor about how
astounding the stuff they are trying to do is from an imaging perspective.

~~~
azernik
The images are LORRI images; however, because of bandwidth constraints (about
1000bps), these are lower-resolution versions of the LORRI images for press
and initial science work. e.g. a one-tenth-resolution image takes about 3
hours to download. See here for a description of the sequence of
transmissions:

[https://youtu.be/ymJRlUQfPfQ?t=586](https://youtu.be/ymJRlUQfPfQ?t=586)

EDIT: The full download of the gigabytes of data from the flyby will take _20
months_ to download.

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Santosh83
Here's an interesting article on this flyby by Phil Plait:
[https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/get-ready-for-humanitys-
most-d...](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/get-ready-for-humanitys-most-distant-
encounter-tonights-the-night-for-2014-mu69)

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KineticLensman
NASA press release at [0], with a better (pre-flyby) image of Ultima Thule.

[0] [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-
Article.php?page=20...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-
Article.php?page=20190101)

~~~
garmaine
That’s the same image, rotated.

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dpflan
The timing is sensational: humanity begins 2019 with an astronomical milestone
event.

~~~
dylan604
Another one would be the Chinese landing their craft on the far side of the
moon. No confirmed date, but within the next couple of days.
[https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/680542096/chinas-lunar-
lander...](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/680542096/chinas-lunar-lander-to-
explore-moons-far-side)

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aristophenes
Wow. Scrolling backwards through the entries, how had I not seen this before?
There’s a 3D movie exploring Pluto, I’m on my phone and it took me a minute to
realize as I moved my phone around I could look all over at the scenery.
Really great stuff!

~~~
hodgesrm
It's unbelievably cool to have a device in your hand that opens up the gates
to the rest of the universe. Something for us all to remember the next time
we're tempted to bash the evils of technology.

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solarengineer
Motivational videos by Erik Wernquist: New Horizons (for National Space
Society): [https://vimeo.com/132183032](https://vimeo.com/132183032)

Wanderers: [https://vimeo.com/108650530](https://vimeo.com/108650530)

Casino's Grand Finale ( for JPL) :
[https://vimeo.com/210782375](https://vimeo.com/210782375)

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eponeponepon
Has there been any talk of further fly-by targets? I seem to recall there were
a number of possible candidates after the Pluto fly-by, but I suppose the
Thule visit might have ruled some or all of those others out.

~~~
KineticLensman
I haven't found a definitive 'no' but with a bit of quick googling - the
current mission extension runs until (at least) 2021 and there is very little
onboard fuel for significant course updates. Some of the other potential
targets were in fact ruled out by the selection of Ultima Thule. The extended
mission for New Horizons calls for the spacecraft to conduct observations of,
and look for ring systems around, between 25 and 35 different KBOs.

~~~
radarsat1
I'm curious what is the reason to think there would be ring systems around
these objects? Aren't rings usually associated with planets much larger than
earth, whereas these objects are much smaller?

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eponeponepon
Long-lasting rings would be - fundamentally all you need for a ring to form is
some debris and a gravity well.

To be clear, something that "doesn't last long" on an astronomical timescale
could still quite happily exist stably for several dozen human lifetimes.

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cmurf
This article says it will take ~20 months to transmit the image data; by
September 2020.

[https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-spacecraft-captures-
ima...](https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-spacecraft-captures-images-of-
ultima-thule-in-farthest-flyby-of-space-object-in-our-solar-system)

~~~
bpicolo
That’s for all of it. I’d imagine we start getting pieces faster than that.
Latency is 6 hours, speed is roughly a kilobit?

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jccooper
Images to be posted here as they come in:
[http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/UltimaThule-
Encounter/](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/UltimaThule-Encounter/)

Not much yet.

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sidcool
Live press conference

[https://youtu.be/CyVVcImYg9E](https://youtu.be/CyVVcImYg9E)

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dfischer
So cool.

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SOMA_BOFH
new horizons is exiting the solar system without a golden record or a golden
plaque.

seems like a waste of a very unique opportunity.

~~~
jcranmer
For the next 20-30k years, the Sun will be the closest star to this
spacecraft. Any alien civilization capable of interstellar travel would
probably be intelligent enough to reckon that the probe, if chanced upon
within that timeframe, would originate from Sun and might pop over for a look.
Beyond that timeframe, I'm not so sure a record would be in playable
condition. Furthermore, if interstellar travel were actually possible, one
would rather hope that humanity would have developed it by that point.

All-in-all, it seems unlikely that a golden record would be all that useful.

~~~
SOMA_BOFH
i'd think there would be very little erosion in interstellar space, even over
billions of years.

"Perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion
years will ever come upon them.

Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all human beings
will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts
will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably
altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth
to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.

Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the
memories of a world that is no more, will fly on."

\- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

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Damark
All systems green!

~~~
Damark
That’s good! It could been obliterated, and probably should have.

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hirundo
Maybe this is the first visit to the future home of humanity, the Kuiper Belt.
Vast lebensraum and resources for colonization. Not so much solar power, but
we could fuse our own. When energy is cheap the next bottlenecks are surface
area and mass. It seems like success would drive our descendants to mostly
live in the belt. How disappointing if those images come back tomorrow and
show that it's already occupied.

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macintux
Finding out that it’s already occupied would be the most astounding scientific
discovery in history, so I’m going to have to disagree with you on that.

~~~
hirundo
The most astounding scientific discovery in history ... of competitors for
resources.

