NASA released incredible images of dwarf planets

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NASA опубликовало уникальные снимки карликовых планетProbe NASA sent a photo of dwarf planets, made on a record from the Ground distance

Interplanetary station, New Horizons has established a record, having received images of celestial bodies with the maximum available distance from the Earth to date. On the received from the probe picture or two of the dwarf planet from the Kuiper belt: 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85,
New Horizons is the first spacecraft NASA is flying past Pluto at close range. Thanks to him, the researchers were able to learn that on Pluto there is a cryovolcano, glaciers, mountain ranges and characteristics of the subsurface ocean, and also the first to see the moons Charon, Nix, Hydra and Cerberus in detail. To transfer the stored information took more than fifteen months. After the flight in 2015, it was decided in the period from 2016 to 2021 to explore the Kuiper belt, located at a distance of 30-55 astronomical units from the Sun and containing the body, remaining after the formation of the Solar system.

Now the unit is on its way to its new purpose, the double asteroid 2014 MU69 to which he will arrive in January 2019. This is a TRANS-Neptunian object from the Kuiper belt makes one revolution around the Sun for 295 years. Scientists suggest that 2014 MU69 could be part of a triple system that includes in addition to the double asteroid and even satellite. In the middle of this year will start a monitoring campaign, the details of which we wrote earlier, and while New Horizons is in hibernation mode, which will last until June of this year.

December 5, 2017, two weeks before entering “hibernation”, the device with the camera LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) received the navigation image, which was captured scattered star cluster NGC 3532 “Well Wishes” from the constellation of the Keel. At the time of shooting the space station was at a distance of 6.12 billion kilometers from Earth. It thus broke the previous record set in February 1990, when the apparatus “Voyager 1” got famous photograph Pale Blue Dot from a distance of about of 6.06 billion kilometers from Earth.

Two hours later, New Horizons has already beaten his own record by making color photographs of two Kuiper Belt objects (2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85). The machine watched the heavenly bodies and tried to find them traces of dust or rings. The new images are the closest images of Kuiper Belt objects obtained to date.

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