Looking at an alien sky

New Horizons probe sees shifted star positions (photos) Images of the star Proxima Centauri captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft (left) and a ground-based telescope (right). Use a stereo viewer for these photos; if you don’t have a viewer, change your focus from the image by looking “through” it (and the screen) and into the distance. This creates the effect of a third image in the middle; try setting your focus on that third image. NASA's pioneering New Horizons spacecraft has traveled so far that its view of the cosmos is noticeably different than ours. 
The first time that changes in the perspective of stars have been observed from two different positions in space (6.9 billion km distant from each other) (this method is called stellar parallax and is normally performed using two positions of Earth in its orbit around the sun whose maximum distance between one position and another is 300 million km, in this case the distance between the telescope on Earth and the probe was used for the first time is 6900 million km.
Explanation:

Stellar parallax is calculated by observing the apparent motion of a nearby star against the background of more distant stars as Earth rotates around the Sun, known as stellar parallax. ... The closest star is Proxima Centauri, which exhibits a parallax of 0.762 arcseconds.
The news:
New Horizons, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and the even more distant object Arrokoth last year, recently photographed the nearby stars Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359. In a spacecraft first, the imagery shows the two stars occupying slightly different patches of sky than they do from our perspective here on Earth. "It's fair to say that New Horizons is looking at an alien sky, unlike what we see from Earth," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "And that has allowed us to do something that had never been accomplished before — to see the nearest stars visibly displaced on the sky from the positions we see them on Earth." This two-frame animation blinks back and forth between New Horizons and Earth images of the star Proxima Centauri, clearly illustrating the different view of the sky New Horizons has from its deep-space perch. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Las Cumbres Observatory/Siding Spring Observatory) New Horizons captured the imagery on April 22 and April 23, when the probe was more than 4.3 billion miles (6.9 billion kilometers) from its home planet. That's so far away that it took 6.5 hours for the data containing the photos, moving at the speed of light, to travel from New Horizons to mission scientists' inboxes. (New Horizons isn't the farthest-flung spacecraft, however. For instance, NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are both exploring interstellar space, more than 11 billion miles from home.) Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 are much more distant still, of course. Though Proxima Centauri is the sun's nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star is still 4.2 light-years — about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) — from Earth. Wolf 359 lies about 7.9 light-years from us. New Horizons team members compared the probe's photos to imagery of Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 captured by two ground-based telescopes — one at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia and another at Mt. Lemmon Observatory in Arizona. This two-frame animation blinks back and forth between New Horizons and Earth images of the star Wolf 359, clearly illustrating the different view of the sky New Horizons has from its deep-space perch. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/University of Louisville/Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/Mt. Lemmon Observatory) Both Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 appear to jump when the two photo sets are overlaid, showcasing the "parallax effect." (You can witness this effect firsthand, by the way: Hold your index finger up at arm's length, then blink each eye successively as you stare at it.) "The professional and amateur astronomy communities had been waiting to try this, and were very excited to make a little space exploration history," New Horizons science team member Tod Lauer, of the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, said in the same statement. "The images collected on Earth when New Horizons was observing Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 really exceeded my expectations." Lauer coordinated the parallax demonstration and created the new double-barreled imagery, which includes 3D views of the stars from the different perspectives. In this latter effort he had help from New Horizons deputy project scientist John Spencer of SwRI and science team collaborator Brian May, an astrophysicist who also happens to play guitar for the band Queen.

As 2018 ended and 2019 began, NASA's New Horizons flew past its first target after Pluto: 2014 MU69.

Ultima Thule is barely a blip in images from the New Horizons spacecraft. The remote world stands out more when the stars have been removed (right); the dark blobs are artifacts from imperfect star subtraction. Yellow crosshairs mark Ultima’s position. Until just a few days before its arrival, 2014 MU69 (Ultima Thule) was no more than a single pixel in New Horizons' detectors.

Nicknamed Ultima Thule, it's transformed from a single pixel in our detectors to a red-hued, mottled snowman.

The first color image constructed (via a composite from New Horizons data) of 2014 MU69: Ultima Thule. The reddish color is likely due to tholins: the same reddish color visibly present on the surface of Charon.

The first three weeks of data have revealed spectacular details concerning this distant world.

Multiple images of Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) as New Horizons approached it reveal a body that's rotating and tumbling, but also reveal additional details about the object, as the distance from the camera decreased from 500,000 km down to 28,000 km: a decrease of 94%.NASA/JHUAPL

Aside from its inactivity, it conforms perfectly to our expectations of cometary nuclei.

Many comets have had their nuclei imaged by a variety of spacecraft, revealing two main classes of cometary nuclei: a single-object nucleus and a contact binary nucleus. 2014 MU69 appears to be of the contact binary type, and marks the first time we've ever imaged such an object before it's ever developed a tail or lost some of its volatiles.

Its now-legendary snapshots and movies of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko show offgassing, plumes, and even snow.

The sun-facing sides of comets heat up first, with the presence of easily-sublimated ices leading to offgassing, the release of pressure, and the loss of material. The longer comets spend in close proximity to the Sun, the faster they evaporate. For objects still in the Kuiper belt, evaporation should be negligible.ESA/ROSETTA/NAVCAM

Volatile, icy materials are abundant on these comets, and change phase rapidly when they're exposed to sunlight.

The most spectacular movie from ESA's Rosetta mission shows what the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko looks like, including the volatile ices that sublimate and re-freeze when they're in sunlight or shadow, respectively, causing this snow-like behavior.

Ultima Thule is currently rotating and tumbling in a similar fashion to these known, close-in comets.

The only difference? It's still incredibly distant from the Sun, causing its ices to remain intact.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/21/new-horizons-big-reveal-on-mu69-ultima-thule-is-a-typical-future-comet/#7892c4d831e0

Ultima Thule, the farthest astronomical object to be explored by a human-made probe. It will arrive in New Year 2019

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured the world's attention when it buzzed Pluto in July 2015. In January 2019, it will set another record when it reaches another object in the outer edges of the solar system. Known as 2014 MU69 or by its nickname Ultima Thule, the ancient object will provide insight into the early life of the sun and its planets. Unlike other things explored by spacecraft, the tiny chip of ice and rock will be the first to be explored by a spacecraft launched before its discovery.

Both Pluto and 2014 MU69 lie within the Kuiper Belt, a collection of icy rocks that surrounds the outer reaches of the solar system. These objects are thought to be pristine samples from the early solar system, cast out into the boundary zone through gravitational interactions with the larger objects that would grow into planets. Examining them should reveal insight into what was happening in the solar system in the first stages of its lifetime.

NASA announced on Aug. 28, 2015, that it had selected 2014 MU69 as its first choice for the probe's secondary mission.

In 2011, mission scientists used ground-based telescopes to begin searching for a second target, but none of the new discoveries lay within the reach of New Horizons. In 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope joined the search, locating five potential objects. One of them was 2014 MU69, which was labeled 1110113Y after its June 26, 201f4 discovery and PT1 ("potential target 1") after its elevation to one of two possible destinations. In August 2015, the mission team selected 2014 MU69 as its next potential target.

"2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen."

New Horizons' final target lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto.

In 2017, the New Horizons team requested suggestions for nicknames from the public as part of an outreach campaign. The final decision, Ultima Thule, is a term used in medieval times to mean "beyond the known world." The nickname was submitted by about 40 different people, NASA officials said.

"MU69 is humanity's nex  t Ultima Thule," Stern said.

Far out

Even with Hubble, details of Ultima Thule are difficult to make out. The tiny object is estimated to be just under 30 miles (about 45 km) across, less than 1 percent the size of Pluto. If the object is brighter, then it is likely smaller, while a darker object would be larger. Similar objects could have helped to build the dwarf planet in the past.

"There's so much that we can learn from close-up spacecraft observations that we'll never learn from Earth, as the Pluto flyby demonstrated so spectacularly," New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also of SwRI, said in the statement. 

"The detailed images and other data that New Horizons could obtain from a KBO flyby will revolutionize our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and KBOs."

 There's so much that we can learn from close-up spacecraft observations that we'll never learn from Earth, as the Pluto flyby demonstrated so spectacularly," New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also of SwRI, said in the statement. 

"The detailed images and other data that New Horizons could obtain from a KBO flyby will revolutionize our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and KBOs."

Coldness and loneliness of spece
D. Anton

Absolute zero, also called zero Kelvin, occurs when the particles that constitute matter have no motion. Measured in degrees Celsius 0 Kelvin takes place at -273.15 (degrees Celsius below zero).
The average temperature at the Earth's surface is 287 degrees Kelvin or 14 degrees Celsius above zero. The average temperature at the surface of Mars is 213 degrees Kelvin or minus 60 degrees Celsius. Pluto, which is much further away, shows very low temperatures of 44 degrees Kelvin or 229 degrees Celsius below zero.
The Horizons probe that was sent to Pluto had to cross enormous distances. In them, without internal heating systems, the temperature of the probe would have dropped to 270 degrees centigrade below zero or about 3 degrees above the absolute 0.
So the interplanetary space is cold, VERY COLD.
But in addition to being cold, it is fundamentally empty space, VERY EMPTY. A spacecraft, such as New Horizons, destined for the planet Pluto (about 6,000 million km away from Earth) traveled 9 years (yes, more than 3,300 days) at a speed of 30,000 to 15,000 kilometers per hour, without finding any particles of visible dimensions . Only the loneliness of space. THE GREAT LONELINESS OF SPACE.
It only came to Pluto because it was directed in that direction. In any other direction I would have followed long into interstellar space.
But the New Horizons story did not end there.
From Pluto, the spacecraft was redirected to a small asteroid a hundred kilometers of diameter, distant about 2,000 million kilometers from Pluto, which will arrive in about three more years, continuing its march through the empty space.
Cold and empty. The greatest of the solitudes. Only the faint light of distant stars.
Incomprehensible to us, little human beings, on this hospitable planet, accompanied only by ourselves.

Cold and lonely. Such is the universe.