In the Journey to the West, the Tang monk Pingdingshan Lotus Cave was captured by the Golden Horn King, the Silver Horn King, two little demons, delicate ghosts and worms carrying the purple gold and red gourd to pretend to be sun wukong who was pressed under the mountain, but was deceived by Sun Wukong with a fake gourd that can be used to pretend to heaven and earth, where did this purple gold red gourd go later? Well, you may have thought about what I'm going to say, on the first day of the new year, NASA's New Horizons probe found it in the Kuiper Belt, 6.5 billion kilometers from Earth.
The gourd-shaped object is 2014 mu69, informally known as the Ultimate Ultima thule, and is thought to be the legacy of the primordial clouds of gas and dust that gathered to form the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. The birth of the Ultimate Far Horizon may have taken only a few hundred thousand to a few million years, and countless pebble-sized fragments gradually gathered together in a rotation, colliding at low speed to form two larger blocky objects, and then the two large blocks collided at a speed of several kilometers per hour - about the same speed as humans walking, so that finally a spark of love was sparked, happily combined, and became a treasure gourd. The story behind is what we are familiar with, the treasure gourd eventually fell into the hands of Taishang Laojun, and was stolen by his children, so that Sun Wukong suffered a lot.
Well, that's just a hu (shuo) saying that the ultimate far-flung realm was discovered by NASA in 2014 when it was looking for potential probes for the New Horizons probe flying over Pluto, and its size is about 45 kilometers. After listing it as a potential observation object of New Horizons, scientists have struggled to obtain more detailed information, especially whether there are meteorites, dust and other objects around it that may cause harm to New Horizons. Because of the distance and dim light, it is impossible to observe these conditions directly, and scientists have to use the moment it passes between distant stars and Earth to observe them using the occultation method.
Do you think it's too simple? Set up a telescope, wait for it to fly in front of a star, press the camera shutter, and a beautiful high-resolution photo is introduced?
In fact, this is extremely difficult, nasa has set up a special "kbo chasers" team, and traveled around the earth for more than a year before finally determining that there may not be any objects around it that are harmful to New Horizons.
The first time was on June 3, 2017, when two teams of NASA scientists traveled to Argentina and South Africa to try to capture a silhouette of 2014 Mu 69, but unfortunately the calculation was wrong, the telescope was not placed in the correct position, and naturally nothing was captured.
The second time, on July 10, 2017, scientists put the telescope sofia on a plane and flew over the Pacific Ocean from Christchurch, New Zealand, close to the calculated centerline of the second occultation, successfully collecting data. However, preliminary analysis suggests that the asteroid's shadow appeared to have been missed, only to discover the following year that Sofia had accurately observed a brief dimming of the central shadow, and the data collected this time was valuable for limiting the dust around 2014 mu 69.
The third time, on July 17, 2017, a team of scientists built 24 mobile telescope ground fences in the remote provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz in southern Argentina, watching 2014 Mu 69 pass by an unnamed star. The average spacing between these telescopes is less than 4.5 kilometers, and five telescopes eventually captured images of the 2014 mu 69 occultation, further confirming the shape, size and surrounding dust of the asteroid.
On August 4 of this year, two teams of about 50 scientists traveled to Senegal and Colombia, and this time only one telescope observed the occultation of 2014 mu 69, providing important information about its size and shape.
One minute on stage, ten years offstage. For the short "date" between New Horizons and Treasure Gourd 2014 mu 69, NASA scientists can be said to have done their homework and exhausted their efforts. Judging by the results of the occultation, 2014 Mu 69 may have had an elongated body surrounded by nothing that would pose a threat to New Horizons.
New Horizons has now skimmed 2014 mu 69, and low-resolution photos show it resembles a snowman, and of course more like the red gourd of the Silver Horn King— it has been bombarded by cosmic rays for 4.6 billion years, and its body has a faint red hue of vicissitudes, and Taishang Laojun should take it back and re-gild it.
Since New Horizons is so far from Earth and the antenna power is low — not as good as a refrigerator bulb , and the data transmission is slow , we may have to wait longer to see higher resolution images. Of course, scientists also have some concerns, because new horizons fly by the speed of the speed, the images captured may not be clear.