Tag Archive for 'Contact binary'

The stereographic image pairs (a-c), taken by the L’LORRI instrument on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft on November 1, 2023, show the asteroid Dinkinesh. The yellow and rose dots indicate the trough and ridge features, respectively. These images have been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast. The image (d) shows a side view of Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam taken a few minutes after closest approach. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab.

Asteroid Dinkinesh’s Moon is Contact Binary, Astronomers Say

Jun 11, 2024 by News Staff

Dinkinesh is a small asteroid orbiting the Sun near the inner edge of the main asteroid belt. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft recently revealed the asteroid,...

Optical (left) and infrared (right) image of NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud; the positions of the main ionizing sources of NGC 346, namely SSN 7 and SSN 9, are highlighted by red and green squares, respectively. Image credit: A. Nota, ESA & STScI / NASA / ESA / CSA / O. Jones, UK ATC / G. De Marchi, ESTEC / M. Meixner, USRA / A. Pagan, STScI / N. Habel, USRA / L. Lenkic, USRA / L. Chu, NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Two Massive Touching Stars Will Merge as Black Holes in 18 Billion Years, Astronomers Predict

Apr 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

SSN 7 is a so-called contact binary located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy some 210,000 light-years away in the constellation of Tucana....

This image taken by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the most detailed of Ultima Thule returned so far by the spacecraft. It was taken at 12:01 a.m. EST (5:01 a.m. GMT) on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 km). Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Ultima Thule is Contact Binary, New Horizons Team Says

Jan 3, 2019 by News Staff

New images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft — taken from as close as 17,000 miles (27,000 km) on approach — revealed Ultima Thule as a...