Most distant object ever explored -Ultima Thule

[Brian]

"NASA’s New Horizons Team Publishes First Kuiper Belt Flyby Science Results"

with high-resolution image:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new ... ce-results

[RMSteele]

Very interesting Brian. The image shows several light coloured ring-like markings on the surface of the larger component. Could these mark the edges of previous contact sites between the two? If so, what would be the mechanism that caused them to roll around each other - collisions, outgassing? Bob

[brian livesey]

After the Kuiper Belt it's the Oort Cloud of comets. It will take Voyager 1 three hundred years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud.
A puzzle here is: the Oort Cloud is beyond the Heliosphere ( the Sun's gravitational influence ), so how does it maintain its integrity? We might expect the comets in the cloud to disperse in all directions rather than clustering around the Sun : .