New Horizons took this image of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) on Jan. 1, 2019, when the NASA spacecraft was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond it. The image to the left is an "average" of ten images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI); the crescent is blurred in the raw frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera’s si'gnal level. Mission scientists have been able to process the image, removing the motion blur to produce a sharper, brighter view of Ultima Thule's thin crescent.
NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory
2019-02-08
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?page=1&amp;gallery_id=2&amp;image_id=591">http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?page=1&amp;gallery_id=2&amp;image_id=591</a><br>Direct image link: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/pics/UlitmaThule_Crescent_2-7-19.jpg">http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/pics/UlitmaThule_Crescent_2-7-19.jpg</a>