Astronomy / 21st CenturyOn January 1 New Horizons encountered the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. (Some 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun; Ultima Thule is the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft from Earth. This historic image; the highest resolution image released so far; was made at a range of about 28;000 kilometers only 30 minutes before the New Horizons closest approach. Likely the result of a gentle collision shortly after the birth of the Solar System; Ultima Thule is revealed to be a contact binary; two connected sphere-like shapes held in contact by mutual gravity. Dubbed separately by the science team Ultima and Thule; the larger lobe Ultima is about 19 kilometers in diameter. Smaller Thule is 14 kilometers across).Photo; January 1st; 2019.Colorization by akg-images.