(January 2, 2019 at 11:16 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: The new Nova episode that was just broadcast tonight was about the New Horizon mission including the Ultima Thule flyby. They talked about some of the difficulties tracking the object. One thing they did was try to catch it as it eclipsed various stars. They sent people to Argentina and South Africa to try to catch it, but their orbital calculations were off so they got nothing. They tried it again from the South Pacific with the SOFIA infrared telescope aboard a 747, but got nothing again. One more try a week later in Patagonia. This time they got the shadow with an array of 5 small (by their standards) telescopes. It was enough for them to make a crude estimate of the oblong shape. It also helped them refine the orbit calculation which let them refine the New Horizon's trajectory to allow for a closer pass.
It really puts things in perspective. You can't see anything of significant size without sunlight, and way out in the Kuiper belt, our sun is barely distinguishable from the other stars. Out there our sun is pretty much a key chain flashlight casting light upon an entire landscape. If there were a gas giant in interstellar space, it may as well be invisible. Nobody could create an artificial light source big enough to allow us to see what it looks like.
We're lucky to get any kind of image at all of Ultima Thule.
