Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 Might Have a Small Moon

The upcoming encounter of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft with 2014 MU69 will be an important and rare opportunity for close-up study of a Kuiper Belt object. The New Horizons team was already excited to learn earlier this year that 2014 MU69 might be either peanut-shaped or even a binary. Now new data hints that this object might have a tiny moon.

2014 MU69, the next flyby target of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, might have a moon. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI.

2014 MU69, the next flyby target of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, might have a moon. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI.

2014 MU69, also known as 1110113Y, was discovered on June 26, 2014 by astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

It orbits the Sun once every 293 years at a distance of more than 4 billion miles (6.5 billion km) from Earth.

2014 MU69 is a relatively small Kuiper Belt object — it appears to be no more than 20 miles (30 km) long, or, if a binary, each about 9-12 miles (15-20 km) in diameter. Its surface is just as red as, if not redder than, Pluto’s surface.

Like other objects in the Kuiper Belt, 2014 MU69 offers a close-up look at the remnants of the ancient planet-building process, small worlds that hold critical clues to the formation of the outer Solar System.

“We really won’t know what 2014 MU69 looks like until we fly past it, or even gain a full understanding of it until after the encounter,” said New Horizons team member Dr. Marc Buie, from the Southwest Research Institute.

“But even from afar, the more we examine it, the more interesting and amazing this little world becomes.”

The data that led to hints at 2014 MU69’s nature were gathered over six weeks in June and July 2017, when Dr. Buie and colleagues made three attempts to place telescopes in the narrow shadow of the object as it passed in front of a star.

The most valuable recon came on July 17, when five telescopes deployed by the team in Argentina were in the right place at the right time to catch this fleeting shadow — an event known as an occultation — and capture important data on 2014 MU69’s size, shape and orbit.

That data raised the possibility that 2014 MU69 might be two like-sized objects, or what’s known as a binary.

The prospect that 2014 MU69 might have a moon arose from data collected during a different occultation on July 10, by NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).

Focused on 2014 MU69’s expected location while flying over the Pacific Ocean, SOFIA detected what appeared to be a very short drop-out in the star’s light.

“Further analysis of that data, including syncing it with 2014 MU69 orbit calculations provided by ESA’s Gaia mission, opens the possibility that the ‘blip’ SOFIA detected could be another object around 2014 MU69,” Dr. Buie said.

“A binary with a smaller moon might also help explain the shifts we see in the position of 2014 MU69 during these various occultations.”

“It’s all very suggestive, but another step in our work to get a clear picture of 2014 MU69 before New Horizons flies by, just over a year from now.”

Dr. Buie and co-authors reported their results December 11 at the 2017 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Marc W. Buie et al. A Preview of 2014 MU69 Revealed by HST and a Ground-based Stellar Occultation. 2017 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, paper # P13F-08

This article is based on text provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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