New Images of the Distant Ultima Thule Object Have Surprised Scientists (arstechnica.com)

Iwastheone shares a report from Ars Technica: Back in early January, when scientists pulled down their first batch of data from the New Horizons spacecraft, they celebrated an odd snowman-shaped object in the outer Solar System. From this first look, it appeared as though Ultima Thule, formally named 2014 MU69, consisted of two spheres in contact with one another -- a contact binary. Now that scientists have downloaded more data from the distant spacecraft, however, our view of Ultima Thule has changed. A sequence of images captured as New Horizons moved away from the object in the Kuiper Belt at a velocity of 50,000 km/hour, taken about 10 minutes after closest approach, show a much flatter appearance. After analyzing these new images, scientists say the larger lobe more closely resembles a large pancake, and the smaller lobe looks a bit like a walnut. The new photos reveal a dramatically different object because they were taken from a different angle than the images that were downloaded first. As planetary scientist Alex Parker noted on Twitter, "The larger lobe looks to have a shape similar to some of the pancake moons of Saturn, like Atlas." However, Saturn's moons were believed to have formed near the gas giant, in the midst of its rings, rather than in deep space.

Comments

Re:Still didn't change the name, eh?

[religionofpeas]

Bad idea to change the name. It's better dilute the Nazi connotations by ordinary use.

Re:Did both parts have a high rotation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iapetus.

There's a few ideas as to what caused the ridge but there's not saying for sure. The front runner seems to be that the ridge is from having a fast rotation early on. As it cooled this ridge solidified and the moon became more spherical as the rotation slowed. At least that's what I've taken from how it's described. It could have also been deposits from a debris disk/ring.

There is also an idea that it's the ridge that determined the rotational axis of the body and not the rotation of the body that formed the ridge. It would be amazing (at least to me) if true but it has been given some consideration.