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The paper, published in Science, contains information on the development, geology and composition of the "planetesimal". As NASA has said before, Ultima Thule has two lobes that make it look like a snowman, although it is actually flattened like a pancake. These two lobes seem to be close together before becoming a pair in orbit that has finally merged. The largest lobe is about 22 x 20 x 7 km, while the smallest is about 14 x 14 x 10 km.
In addition, Ultima Thule is very red in color. It is much redder than even Pluto and is actually the most red object that New Horizons has visited. Although the team is not yet 100% sure, she thinks the redness results from the change of organic matter present on its surface. The paper also notes that the object rotates on its axis every 15.92 hours and that its brightest regions are in its neck, where the lobes are connected. It also has two bright spots inside its larger crater-like feature.
Speaking of craters, Ultima Thule does not have many small ones, which indicates that there are not many objects less than one kilometer in diameter in the Kuiper Belt. The newspaper also said New Horizons had found no trace of satellites, rings or atmosphere around the object. These are just the first data from the flyby – we'll learn more about the snowman in flat spaces in the coming months. The New Horizons probe still transmits the event data and will continue to do so until the summer of 2020.
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