Welcome back to Launch Pad, I'm Christian Ready your friendly neighborhood
astronomer. Well, we just got done our second press conference from the New
Horizons team from showing us images of Ultima Thule. We got to see some
beautiful stereo images, and here to talk a little bit about that with me is a Dr.
Kirby Runyon. Dr. Runyon or Kirby, how are you doing today sir? [Kirby] I'm fine thanks it's
another exciting day exploring the Kuiper belt. [Chris] So all right so tell me a
little bit more about what we saw today and what you saw today and I understand
you're a geologist right so I wondered you could tell us a little bit about or
you know talk a little bit about what you plan to be doing with the data as it
trickles in? [Kirby] yeah so as the especially the high-resolution data sets from the
LORRI camera come in from the spacecraft we're gonna be focusing especially where
we think the geology on Ultima Thule is going to be most pronounced and right
now we're kind of thinking that might be in the general area of the neck where
the two lobes Ultima and Thule are joined at the hip as it were, a little bright
ring in the middle, right yeah, we think the slopes there are really high and
she'd have a lot of downhill slope movement of boulders or dust or
something and we want to see what kind of geologic landforms have kind of
accumulated where those lobes have come together. [Chris] When... you know, it's it's kind of
interesting to think a little about because we're you mentioned rolling
downhill and I thought maybe we could have a little bit of fun with like the
gravity of the situation because we are talking about. you know two objects each
with their own each with their own individual centers of mass and then
there's a system center of mass how close is the system center of mass to
the neck the rotation axis is displaced from the neck inside the larger lobe a
little bit probably approximately halfway between the ends of the two
lobes I would guess approximately there and and that would be also where the so
the illustrations you've seen from James Keane that show the rotation axis
popping out through altima tule it's somewhere in the in the wider part of
the of the body right okay so but so material from do you think material from
Thule or Thule would be more material would be rolling down from Thule onto
the neck then from Ultima or do you think it could be a combination of both
we don't know the exact ratios of the downhill slope from either lobe it's
probably some combination of both and in fact James Keane who
so produced our artwork is also a PhD planetary geophysicist and so he's done
modeling of the slopes and the gravity showing that the slopes are steepest
relative to the gravity in the area of the neck so we'd expect the most
downslope movement probably in the neck area which is why I think it's going to
be very interesting place to look geologically once we get higher
resolution pictures back in a few weeks Wow so and that's got to be it right I
mean we only have the low resolution images these are a thumbnail quality
images right all right is there anything that you're already peeked about I mean
is this like the worst tease in the world to see such almost but not quite
science core the images so our highest resolution pictures now are around 140
meters per pixel and it's exactly that it's a it's a tease it's it's both
satisfying and it's frustrating because we see a little bit of what it looks
like but we don't see enough of what we really want to like just sink our teeth
into geologically yeah so okay now when it comes in, what are you looking
for? What are you hoping to find? Is there a betting pool? What do you know what do
you what do you hope for this point Kirby? I'm I'll be happy with anything
right now but I'm really interested in the sedimentary geology at this space
between the neck I'm gonna be looking for things like any windblown ripples
probably not there but we're gonna look for them we saw them on comet 67p we're
gonna be looking for a downhill slope streaks or slope movements we're gonna
be looking for ejecta from any impact event so things that has gotten scooped
out of the subsurface and sprayed across the surface we're gonna be looking for
those kinds of boulder streaks or ejected distributions like that that.
Sounds exciting, and you get to start really digging into this about when? It's
gonna be several weeks from now probably early February. Early February okay so
this has got to feel like the longest January in history for you. I can't
believe it's only January 3rd. It's already yeah I guess so but overall is
everything working, you know, kind of the way you would hoped it would work is it
kind of meh, kind of better or is that, what would you say it is on the on the
fun meter? Oh it's definitely pegged at 10 on the fun meter the team has gelled
really well we've been working together for a long time we're having a lot of
fun in our back room it's intense but I draw a lot of energy off that intensity
and speculation and like the the inside
jokes that crop up during that time are a lot of fun as well so the team has
really come together Monday in particular was a lot of fun it was a
14-hour day really long day just pouring oh yeah new xever oh well New Year's
even year's day we're both they just blur together but there were so much fun
as we were just pouring over all this new data and working together and trying
to turn out new results as fast as we could
so when Alan Stern mentioned that now we're at conjunction which means Pluto
I'm sorry Ultima and knew specifically New Horizons is on the other side of the
Sun from Earth we're going into a radio blackout with
you are you planning to get any more data between now and the start of that
blackout or are you pretty much just done for now and waiting my
understanding is that were basically done transmitting through the sun's
solar corona is not a good good idea so we're basically in radio silence for
about five days as my understanding well now wait they're flying are they're
flying the Parker Solar Probe right across the hall from New Horizons why
don't we go and talk to them and say hey can you relay the data from New Horizons
well if it'd be great at the spacecraft could do that but that's a great idea
wouldn't it be nice right yeah Oh Kirby man this has been great by the way I
want to give a shout out to a thena bren's burger hey Athena from Astro
Athens if you're not subscribed to her Channel please do subscribe extremely
enthusiastic and the reason why I'm shouting rounds because she was very
kind enough to introduce me to Kirby ahead of ahead of this week's event so
Athena thank you Thank You marina yeah we're so glad we're so glad to have
you and thank you again dr. Runyon dr. Kirby all right take care Kirby see ya
there he goes dr. Kirby Runyon planetary geologist on
New Horizons can't wait to see what's next let's go talk to somebody else