Tau.Neutrino said:
New Horizons Just Took a Record Breaking Image. No Camera Has Ever Taken a Picture From This Far From Earth
In July of 2015, the New Horizons mission made history by being the first spacecraft to rendezvous with Pluto. In the course of conducting its flyby, the probe gathered volumes of data about Pluto’s surface, composition, atmosphere and system of moons. It also provided breathtaking images of Pluto’s “heart”, its frozen plains, mountain chains, and it’s mysterious “bladed terrain”.
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With its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), New Horizons has observed several Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and dwarf planets at unique phase angles, as well as Centaurs at extremely high phase angles to search for forward-scattering rings or dust. These December 2017 false-color images of KBOs 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85 are, for now, the farthest from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. They’re also the closest-ever images of Kuiper Belt objects. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
I am really startled that it passed close enough to these KBOs to take any sort of picture. 2012 HE85 is clearly non-circular. This is even a better picture than was possible from Earth because it pins down the exact diameter. Previously the diameter was only known to be in the range of somewhere between 16 and 127 km.
Also compare mean distance of 44.6 AU with that of Pluto at 39.5 AU.
Last Update: 2016-Apr-08 00:51
Orbital Elements
MPC MINOR PLANET
EPOCH OF ELEMENTS (MJD) 57600.0
ORBITAL INCLINATION IN DEG 3.02156
LONGITUDE OF ASCENDING NODE (DEG) 235.10601
ARG OF PERIHELION (DEG) 55.80468
ECCENTRICITY 0.101213
MEAN DISTANCE (AU) 44.6126457
MEAN ANOMALY (DEG) 354.28933
ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE (H) 10.1
SLOPE PARAMETER (G) 0.15
ALBEDO (AVERAGE) 0.17
ALBEDO (RANGE) 0.01 – 0.60
DIAMETER IN METERS (AVERAGE) 31058