Now you see it, now you don’t: NASA’s New Horizons team trained mobile telescopes on an unnamed star (center) from rural Argentina on July 17, 2017. A Kuiper Belt object 4.1 billion miles from Earth -- known as 2014 MU69 -- briefly blocked the light from the background star, in what’s called an occultation. The time difference between frames is 200 milliseconds, or 0.2 seconds. This data helps scientists to better measure the shape, size and environment around the object; the New Horizons spacecraft will fly by this ancient relic of solar system formation on Jan. 1, 2019.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

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