Thirteen years after its launch, NASA’s New Horizons is in fact exploring exactly that – new horizons. The spacecraft has made it past Neptune and Pluto out to the Kuiper Belt and has made the ultimate discovery – Ultima Thule.
TV and radio broadcasters have pronounced the word “Thule” every possible way, but Hallstrom Planetarium Director Jon Bell believes the most accurate pronunciation is “th-u-lah” – derived from the Swedish, meaning “beyond the borders of the known world.”
“This is America, where we can say it any way we want,” said Bell.
However it’s pronounced, Ultima Thule is an apt name for an object more than 4 billion miles from the Sun, and believed to be remnants of the dawn of the Solar System.
Ultima Thule is “likely the result of a gentle collision shortly after the birth of the Solar System,” NASA said on its website regarding the discovery. The ice dwarf is believed to be made of two sphere-like objects connected via contact from mutual gravity.
“They’re jammed together,” Bell said of the two objects that form Ultima Thule. They share a center of mass and rotate together. Bell described their movements like a mismatched pair of children on a teeter-totter.
The late Gerard Kuiper, a Dutch-born U.S. astronomer, theorized the existence of such objects beyond our planetary solar system. He believed asteroids and comets and the like emanated from beyond Neptune and Pluto.
“Kuiper would be very impressed,” Bell said of the New Horizons discovery. “It’s very exciting.”
Bell said Ultima Thule helps support the “nebular theory” – which suggests solar systems, such as ours, began as a cloud of interstallar gas and dust.
Bell explained it this way: When you bake cookies, there is the dough that goes in the oven and becomes a tasty treat and then there is a scrap of dough stuck to the side of the bowl. The cookies are the sun and planets. The scraps are the debris – like asteroids and comets – that didn’t make it into the oven. “We’re looking at primordial material,” Bell said. “It’s great support.”
NASA is expected to release more images from New Horizons as they continue to be transmitted back to Earth. It will take time because, as Bell put it, the spacecraft is transmitting data at 15 watts – less power than is used to power a refrigerator lightbulb.
While Bell does not have current plans to lecture specifically on Ultima Thule during the various upcoming planetarium shows, he said he’s willing to answer all questions thrown his way.
He is focusing on the upcoming lunar eclipse expected on Jan. 20, and the schedule of shows is geared to that topic.
He is also preparing for a Kid Space show, “A Trip through Space,” on Jan. 12 and Jan. 19 at 11 a.m. The program is geared toward children ages 4 to 12 and will highlight all aspects of space. Cost is $5 and adults must be accompanied by at least one child.
