Call for papers—code::dive
▻http://isocpp.org/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=All+Posts&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fisocpp.org%2Fblog%2F2
code::dive 2019 just started its call for papers until the end of 2019-06-30.
Call for papers by code::dive
About the conference:
code::dive 2019 is the 6th edition of the code::dive conference, taking place at Cinema New Horizons at Wrocław, Poland, on 20-21 of November. The conference is organized by Nokia Wrocław.
#News,_Events,
MU69 appears as a bi-lobed baby comet in latest New Horizons images | The Planetary Society
▻http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2019/mu69-baby-comet-contact-binary.html
This is a textbook example of a contact binary. Binary means two objects, of course, and contact means that they’re in contact with each other. Separated binaries are very common in the solar system and especially common in the Kuiper belt. But how can a contact binary form? Is it even plausible for two mutually orbiting bodies to somehow come together so gently and just stick to each other while preserving their originally round shape over billions of years?
▻http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=578
The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
On (en tous cas, Alan Stern, s’en doutait déjà depuis l’été 2017,…
New Horizons’ 2019 Target: A Binary Body? - Sky & Telescope
▻https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/2014-mu69-fascinates-puzzles-observers
New Horizons’ 2019 Target: A Binary Body?
By: Kelly Beatty | August 4, 2017
A challenging and intensive campaign by telescope-toting teams yields big-time results on the body that the New Horizons spacecraft will fly past in 17 months.
The campaign’s first two events, on June 3rd and July 10th, didn’t score a "direct hit” — catching the starlight blinking out momentarily as notoriously dim (27th-magnitude) 2014 MU69 passed in front. But ground-based observers fared much better on July 17th, when five of the 24 observing teams recorded brief cutoffs of light from a 12.6-magnitude star near the Teaspoon asterism in Sagittarius.
These teams, which included some experienced amateur observers, were arrayed about 4½ km (3 miles) apart along a “picket fence” perpendicular to the occultation’s predicted path. The field conditions, in remote parts of Argentina’s Chubut and Santa Cruz provinces, weren’t ideal. Strong winds buffeted the 16-inch-aperture Sky-Watcher reflectors, and some local citizens (including the mayor of Comodoro Rivadavia) helped out by positioning their trucks as windbreaks.
As seen from the ground, the unseen 2014 MU69 approached the star at about 24 km per second (due to Earth’s orbital motion, not the KBO’s), meaning that any cover-up would last at most 3 seconds. The teams used cameras that recorded five frames per second. Since five of them reported disappearances, and given their 4½-km spacing, the object has to be 20 to 30 km (12 to 18 miles) long.
However, the occultation timings don’t match the silhouette that you’d expect for a round object. Instead, reports campaign leader Marc Buie (Southwest Research Institute), it’s likely to be highly elongated (like a skinny eggplant). Or it might be generally spherical with a big chunk missing.
Or it might actually be two objects in a close binary pairing, either touching one another or twirling around each other at very close range. “The shape of MU69 is truly provocative,” says Alan Stern (also at SwRI), New Horizons’ principal investigator.
Le programme de travail projeté pour New Horizons en mars 2016.
With New Horizons so healthy, so capable of carrying out KEM, and so successful at Pluto, we are optimistic about our proposal, which NASA will soon have peer reviewed. If KEM is approved, we will begin both KEM science observations and MU69 flyby planning this fall. If the proposal fails, we will have to turn the spacecraft off in December [2016] for a lack of funds to continue.
[…]
That’s it for now, and I’ll write again soon. Until then, I hope you’ll keep exploring — just as we do!
-Alan Stern
Avec quelques images reçues dernièrement la figure est un peu plus aplatie, plus crêpe que bonhomme de neige
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/pics800wide/UlitmaThule_Crescent_2-7-19.jpg 
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/pics800wide/DraftShapeModelGraphic_001-master.jpg ça devrait plaire à nos ami·es breton·nes ça !
▻http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190208
La sonde New Horizons poursuit sa visite des confins du Système solaire
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2018/12/31/la-sonde-new-horizons-poursuit-sa-visite-des-confins-du-systeme-solaire_5403
Cependant, la mission de #New_Horizons n’était pas terminée. Voilà que la sonde, désormais à 6,5 milliards de kilomètres de nous, resurgit pour le premier jour de 2019 où elle a survolé un petit astre glacé que la #NASA a baptisé #Ultima_Thulé, en référence au nom de Thulé que le navigateur massaliote Pythéas avait attribué, au IVe siècle av. J.-C., à la contrée la plus septentrionale de l’Europe.
Le nom officiel de cet objet céleste d’une trentaine de kilomètres de diamètre est 2014 MU69. Il s’agit de l’un des milliers de corps qui occupent ce que les spécialistes nomment la ceinture de Kuiper, du nom de l’astronome néerlando-américain Gerard Kuiper (1905-1973) qui, le premier, suggéra l’existence, au-delà de l’orbite de Neptune, d’une zone peuplée d’astres froids et modestes en taille.
[…]
Mardi 1er janvier, à 6 h 33 (heure de Paris), l’émissaire robotisé de la NASA, filant dans l’espace à près de 51 000 km/h, passera à 3 500 km d’Ultima Thulé, dont on sait déjà qu’il s’agit d’un objet de forme allongée, cette information ayant été obtenue en le regardant occulter une étoile.
[…]
Dans une déclaration publiée par le Guardian, Alan Stern, le responsable de la mission, explique qu’il faudra « environ vingt mois pour récupérer les données » enregistrées lors du survol du 1er janvier. Et il pense déjà à la suite. La sonde a encore du carburant, ses instruments sont opérationnels, sa batterie nucléaire peut lui fournir de l’électricité pendant des années. Mais aucune nouvelle cible n’est en vue… Cette fois-ci, New Horizons pourrait bien poursuivre sa course vers nulle part.
New Horizons a survécu à son survol historique d’un objet céleste éloigné - Amériques - RFI
▻http://www.rfi.fr/ameriques/20190101-sonde-new-horizons-survecu-son-survol-historique-objet-celeste-eloigne
La sonde a envoyé un signal à la Terre qui a mis à peu près 10 heures à arriver.
New Horizons « est en état de marche », a dit Alice Bowman, une responsable du projet. « Nous venons juste d’accomplir le survol le plus éloigné », s’est-elle réjouie.
C’est à 05h33 TU que New Horizons a braqué ses caméras sur Ultima Thulé, vestige glacé de la formation du système solaire. Les images et données collectées par la sonde commenceront à arriver plus tard mardi. New Horizons devait prendre 900 images en quelques secondes durant son survol d’Ultima Thulé à une distance d’environ 3 500 kilomètres.
Où suivre ?
▻http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Where-to-Watch.php
prochain RV, cet après-midi (heure de la côte Est É.-U.) conférence de presse, premiers résultats ?
The most recent image of #UltimaThule from (02/01/2019 02h52)
@NewHorizons2015, next to a sketch of its potential shape. Stay tuned for more imagery of the Kuiper Belt Object!
Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane
▻https://twitter.com/spaceanswers/status/1080417094322307072
New Horizons dévoile la première image résolue d’Ultima Thule | Ciel & Espace
▻https://www.cieletespace.fr/actualites/new-horizons-devoile-la-premiere-image-resolue-d-ultima-thule
C’est sans doute cette image qui fera la une des journaux demain : l’une des premières photos d’Ultima Thule relativement résolues que la sonde New Horizons doit transmettre. Elle dévoile un astéroïde constitué de deux lobes sphériques, comme le pressentaient hier les chercheurs. “On pourrait surnommer l’un des lobes Ultima et l’autre Thule", plaisante Alan Stern, le responsable de la mission New Horizons.
Les récentes observations confirment la période de rotation de 15 h, avec une précision de 1h, a indiqué la planétologue Cathy Olkin. Les données de l’instrument Ralph de la sonde attestent par ailleurs la couleur rouge/brun, comparable à celle vue au pôle de Charon lors du survol de Pluton en 2015.
Nous publierons un article plus détaillé le 3 janvier 2019, avec les premières conclusions scientifiques.
mais @fil m’a devancé (et il a la couleur…) :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/748579
Sur Pluton, il y a des dunes de glace
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2018/06/05/sur-l-etendue-gelee-de-pluton-aussi-il-y-a-des-dunes_5309639_1650684.html
Un « processus plutonien » permet aux faibles vents de déplacer des grains de méthane en suspension dans de l’azote sublimé.
Ce n’est pas le Sahara. C’est même exactement le contraire. Pas de sable ici ni de chaleur accablante puisque la température de la plaine Spoutnik, essentiellement constituée de glace d’azote, s’élève à 235 degrés en dessous de zéro. Bienvenue sur Pluton… Nous sommes bien loin de la Terre et pourtant, ainsi que vient de le révéler une étude internationale publiée dans Science du 1er juin, une partie de cette vaste étendue gelée est recouverte par des dunes, comme au Sahara.
Cette trouvaille est née de l’analyse des données et clichés envoyés par la sonde américaine New Horizons, lors de son survol de la planète naine en juillet 2015. « Quand nous avons vu pour la première fois les images de New Horizons, nous avons instantanément pensé qu’il s’agissait de dunes, raconte la planétologue américaine Jani Radebaugh, de l’université Brigham Young (Provo, Utah), qui a cosigné l’étude. Mais c’était vraiment surprenant parce que nous savons qu’il n’y a pas grand-chose comme atmosphère » sur Pluton. Car qui dit dunes dit déplacement des grains qui les composent par la voie des airs. Or, sur la planète naine, les airs sont quasi inexistants et la pression atmosphérique est 100 000 fois plus faible que sur la Terre. En guise de vents, on n’a que de légères brises.
La publication dans Science (article accessibles, avec des photos fascinantes…)
Dunes on Pluto | Science
▻http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/992.full
Methane ice dunes on Pluto
Wind-blown sand or ice dunes are known on Earth, Mars, Venus, Titan, and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Telfer et al. used images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft to identify dunes in the Sputnik Planitia region on Pluto (see the Perspective by Hayes). Modeling shows that these dunes could be formed by sand-sized grains of solid methane ice transported in typical Pluto winds. The methane grains could have been lofted into the atmosphere by the melting of surrounding nitrogen ice or blown down from nearby mountains. Understanding how dunes form under Pluto conditions will help with interpreting similar features found elsewhere in the solar system.
Abstract
The surface of Pluto is more geologically diverse and dynamic than had been expected, but the role of its tenuous atmosphere in shaping the landscape remains unclear. We describe observations from the New Horizons spacecraft of regularly spaced, linear ridges whose morphology, distribution, and orientation are consistent with being transverse dunes. These are located close to mountainous regions and are orthogonal to nearby wind streaks. We demonstrate that the wavelength of the dunes (~0.4 to 1 kilometer) is best explained by the deposition of sand-sized (~200 to ~300 micrometer) particles of methane ice in moderate winds (<10 meters per second). The undisturbed morphology of the dunes, and relationships with the underlying convective glacial ice, imply that the dunes have formed in the very recent geological past.
How NASA’s Mission to Pluto Was Nearly Lost - Issue 60: Searches
▻http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/how-nasas-mission-to-pluto-was-nearly-lost
On the Saturday afternoon of July 4, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission leader Alan Stern was in his office near the project Mission Control Center, working, when his cell phone rang. He was aware of the Independence Day holiday but was much more focused on the fact that the date was “Pluto flyby minus 10 days.” New Horizons, the spacecraft mission that had been the central focus of his career for 14 years, was now just 10 days from its targeted encounter with the most distant planet ever explored. Immersed in work that afternoon, Alan was busy preparing for the flyby. He was used to operating on little sleep during this final approach phase of the mission, but that day he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and gone into their Mission Operations Center (MOC) for the upload of the (...)
Récit haletant !
#Pluton #New_Horizons
pas trace de cette péripétie ici, où le survol et les photos résultantes ont été bien couverts.
To New Horizons (1940) | The Public Domain Review
▻https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/to-new-horizons-1940
The film is just amazing.
Promotional film from General Motors created to champion their “Highways and Horizons” exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. The film presents a vision of the future, namely of 1960 seen through the eyes of those living in 1940, and imagines the world of tomorrow which the narrator describes as “A greater world, a better world, a world which always will grow forward”. The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair was the first to focus on the future and the General Motors’s Futurama exhibit consisted of a ride carrying 552 people at a time and showing a diorama designed by Norman Bel Geddes wherein the roads and city planning of the future include elevated pedestrian walkways as well as highways with 7 lanes for cars traveling at different speeds. The exhibit was a hit and easily became the most popular event among the visitors as the promise of a brighter future was welcomed by the Americans who had experienced the Great Depression. Of course, the next five years — which saw war rage across the world on an unprecedented scale — would bring anything but this utopian vision.
Beyond Voyager - Issue 51: Limits
▻http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/beyond-voyager
Forty years ago this coming Tuesday, a car-sized piece of equipment launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Thirty five years later, it became the first and only man-made object to enter interstellar space. Along the way, the Voyager probes (there were two) made headlines for flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. Fran Bagenal was a student when the Voyager probes launched, and wrote her doctoral thesis on data the probes collected around Jupiter. The professor of astrophysical and planetary science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and former chair of NASA’s Outer Planet Assessment Group, has also worked on the Galileo, Deep Space 1, New Horizons and Juno missions. Nautilus caught up with Bagenal to discuss the legacy of Voyager and the future of manned and unmanned exploration (...)