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This One Gif Is Better than Anything Else You'll See Today

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This Gif is the best and there is no better than this on internet. Not even your cats or dogs videos. You are wondering what it is exactly. Well it is next target for NASA’s New Horizons mission. A small rock in the outer skirts of our solar system, passed in front of a star as seen from Earth.

The event in the early morning of July 17 lasted a split-second, but it will give us more information about this rock than we’ve ever gleaned before. All from the shadow that was cast over our planet.

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“It was the most historic occultation on the face of the Earth,” NASA’s director of planetary science, Jim Green, told the team in a statement.

The Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) is called 2014 MU69. It measures roughly 22 to 40 kilometers (14 to 25 miles) across, but we don’t know for sure because it’s so far away and faint. It orbits 40 times further from the Sun than Earth.

We also don’t really know what it looks like. It’s thought to be leftover from the formation of our Solar System 4.6 billion years ago, but its exact characteristics are a mystery. Some artist’s impressions show it as a reddish place, other estimations say it will look more like a grey asteroid. New Horizons will be flying past the object on January 1, 2019. Before then, the team want to get as much data on MU69 as possible, which is why these events – known as occultations – are so important.

This was the third occultation to occur, after previous events on June 3 and 10. On this event, at least five mobile telescopes in Argentina are thought to have seen the shadow of the object as it passed over Earth, from which data will be gleaned. Other telescopes also observed the shadow, including NASA’s mobile flying observatory, SOFIA.

Alan Stern, the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission, told IFLScience that they expected to have the first results from these events in a few weeks.

“We spied the shape and size of 2014 MU69 for the first time, a Kuiper Belt scientific treasure we will explore just over 17 months from now,” he said in a statement. “Thanks to this success we can now plan the upcoming flyby with much more confidence.”

"We did it!" he added. Jolly good.

NASA Just Released the Most Amazing View of the Dwarf Planet Pluto

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There Are X-Rays Coming From Pluto And We Still Don't Know What's Causing It

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Once held to be the outermost planet of the Solar System, Pluto's designation was changed by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, owing to the discovery of many new Kuiper Belt Objects that were comparable in size.

In spite of this, Pluto remains a source of fascination and a focal point of much scientific interest. And even after the historic flyby conducted by the New Horizons probe in July of 2015, many mysteries remain.

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What's more, ongoing analysis of the NH data has revealed new mysteries. For instance, a recent study by a team of astronomers indicated that a survey by the Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the presence of some rather strong x-rays emissions coming from Pluto. This was unexpected, and is causing scientists to rethink what they thought they knew about Pluto's atmosphere and its interaction with solar wind.

In the past, many Solar bodies have been observed emitting x-rays, which were the result of interaction between solar wind and neutral gases (like argon and nitrogen). Such emissions have been detected from planets like Venus and Mars (due to the presence of argon and/or nitrogen in their atmospheres), but also with smaller bodies like comets – which acquire halos due to outgassing.

Ever since the NH probe conducted its flyby of Pluto in 2015, astronomers have been aware that Pluto has an atmosphere which changes size and density with the seasons. Basically, as the planet reaches perihelion during its 248 year orbital period – a distance of 4,436,820,000 kilometres (2,756,912,133 miles) from the Sun – the atmosphere thickens due to the sublimation of frozen nitrogen and methane on the surface.

The last time Pluto was at perihelion was on September 5th, 1989, which means that it was still experiencing summer when NH made its flyby. While studying Pluto, the probe detected an atmosphere that was primarily composed of nitrogen gas (N²) along with methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO²).

Astronomers therefore decided to look for signs of x-ray emissions coming from Pluto's atmosphere using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Prior to the NH mission's flyby, most models of Pluto's atmosphere expected it to be quite extended. However, the probe found that the atmosphere was less extended and that its rate of loss was hundreds of times lower than what these models predicted.

Therefore, as the team indicated in their study, they expected to find x-ray emissions that were consistent with what the NH flyby observed:

"Given that most pre-encounter models of Pluto's atmosphere had predicted it to be much more extended, with an estimated loss rate to space of ~1027 to 1028 mol/sec of N² and CH4… we attempted to detect X-ray emission created by [solar wind] neutral gas charge exchange interactions in the low density neutral gas surrounding Pluto," they wrote.

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However, after consulting data from the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) aboard Chandra, they found that x-ray emissions coming from Pluto were greater than what this would allow for. In some cases, strong x-ray emissions have been noted coming from other smaller objects in the Solar System, which is due to the scattering of solar x-rays by small dust grains composed of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

But the energy distribution they noted with Pluto's x-rays were not consistent with this explanation. Another possibility that the team offered is that they could be due to some process (or processes) that focus the solar wind near Pluto, which would enhance the effect of its modest atmosphere.

As they indicate in their conclusions:

"The observed emission from Pluto is not aurorally driven. If due to scattering, it would have to be sourced by a unique population of nanoscale haze grains composed of C, N, and O atoms in Pluto's atmosphere resonantly fluorescing under the Sun's insolation. If driven by charge exchange between [solar wind] minor ions and neutral gas species (mainly CH4) escaping from Pluto, then density enhancement and adjustment of the [solar wind] minor ion relative abundance in the interaction region near Pluto is required versus naïve models."

For the time being, the true cause of these x-ray emissions is likely to remain a mystery. They also highlight the need for more research when it comes to this distant and most massive of Kuiper Belt Objects.

Luckily, the data provided by the NH mission is likely to be poured over for decades, revealing new and interesting things about Pluto, the outer Solar System, and how the most distant worlds from our Sun behave. The study – which was accepted for publication in the journal Icarus – was conducted by astronomers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Southwest Research Institute (SwI), the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSCC), and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ames Research Center.

This article was originally published with Universe Today. Read the original article.

New Mysteries Surround New Horizons’ Next Flyby Target

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Scientists have been sifting through data gathered from observing the object’s quick pass in front of a star – an astronomical event known as an occultation – on June 3. More than 50 mission team members and collaborators set up telescopes across South Africa and Argentina, along a predicted track of the narrow shadow of MU69 that the occultation would create on Earth’s surface, aiming to catch a two-second glimpse of the object’s shadow as it raced across the Earth.

Accomplishing the observations of that occultation was made possible with the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia, a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA).

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Combined, the pre-positioned mobile telescopes captured more than 100,000 images of the occultation star that can be used to assess the environment around this Kuiper Belt object (KBO). While MU69 itself eluded direct detection, the June 3 data provided valuable and unexpected insights that have already helped New Horizons.

“These data show that MU69 might not be as dark or as large as some expected,” said occultation team leader Marc Buie, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.

Initial estimates of MU69’s diameter, based primarily on data taken by the Hubble Space Telescope since the KBO’s discovery in 2014, fall in the 12-25-mile (20-40-kilometer) range – though data from this summer’s ground-based occultation observations might imply it’s at or even below the smallest sizes expected before the June 3 occultation. Besides MU69’s size, the readings offer details on other aspects of the Kuiper Belt object.

“These results are telling us something really interesting,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of SwRI. “The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didn’t detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed.”

More data are on the way, with additional occultations of MU69 occurring on July 10 and July 17. On July 10, NASA’s airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) will use its powerful 100-inch (2.5-meter) telescope to probe the space around MU69 for debris that might present a hazard to New Horizons as it flies by in 18 months.

On July 17, the Hubble Space Telescope also will check for debris around MU69, while team members set up another groundbased “fence line” of small mobile telescopes along the predicted ground track of the occultation shadow in southern Argentina to try to better constrain, or even determine, the size of MU69.

NASA Scientists: "Pluto Flybys Point to Existence of Life Below Its Surface"

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