l resolution to identify these ices,” she said.
10. Craters and Ridges
The first close-up of MU69 sent back was not at the right angle to show small-scale elevation changes from craters or ridges. Neither was the second. When the team combined the two, however, they were able to create a low-resolution stereographic image that shows some high and low reliefs.
“You see how narrow the neck is, and we also get a sense that bright spots may be associated with topographic lows,” said Paul Schenk, a New Horizons coinvestigator from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. “This may indicate downslope movement of material from topographic highs like ridges. This may be an indication that the dark striping materials might be topographic ridges.” More images will refine these stereographic views and test these theories, he said.
20 Months of Data Ahead
Astronomers still have a long list of questions about MU69 that they are looking to New Horizons to answer. Data from the encounter will take about 20 months to fully downlink from the spacecraft. Forthcoming higher-resolution data should answer the lingering questions about this distant object, the team expects.
Just days after the flyby, New Horizons is already more than 3 million kilometers past MU69. “The first exploration of a small Kuiper Belt object and the most distant exploration of any world in history is now history, but almost all of the data analysis lies in the future,” Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons from SwRI, said during a press conference. “Those of us on the science team can’t wait to begin to start digging into that treasure trove,” he said.
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer