NASA’s New Horizons probes ‘alien sky’ at the edge of the solar system

NASA’s New Horizons spaceship has a good resume. It left for Pluto in 2005 and a decade later introduced the dwarf planet in all its heart-shaped splendor. Then it continued its journey over a bizarre, two-lobed world known as “Arrokoth” last year. On the way to the edge of the solar system, NASA scientists turned their cameras into the sky and showed that some of the stars closest to Earth look a little different than the spaceship.

“It’s fair to say that New Horizons looks at an alien sky differently than we see it from Earth,” said Alan Stern, the project’s main researcher, in a NASA release on Wednesday.

In April, the New Horizons team focused the spacecraft’s cameras on two stars: Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359. Proxima Centauri is approximately 4.2 light years from the Sun the closest star to our solar system, while Wolf 359 is approximately 7. 9 light lies. Years away. At that time, the spaceship was about 7 billion kilometers from Earth. Because of the great distance between the intrepid robot researcher and his home, the first interstellar “parallax” experiment could be carried out.

Parallax is a term that describes how objects appear to have moved from different angles. NASA is a good example: hold your finger in front of your face and close one eye. Then change – open the other eye and close the open eye. Since the viewing angle has changed slightly, the background behind your finger has also changed slightly and appears to be in a different position.

Scientists can use this type of observation to determine where stars are in space. If you take a picture of Proxima Centauri from Earth in December and another in June, you can use the angle to estimate how far away the stars are.

You can also shorten this waiting time and take pictures at the same time if you have a camera that is far enough away from Earth. This is where New Horizons comes in. New Horizons took pictures of Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 on April 22nd and 23rd. At the same time, telescopes on Earth took their own pictures of the two stars. If you look at the images side by side, you can see the stars in different positions. You haven’t moved – but our perspective has.

“The New Horizons experiment offers the largest parallax baseline ever created … and is the first demonstration of an easily observable star parallax,” said Tod Lauer, a member of the New Horizons team that coordinated the experiment.

Queen guitarist Brian May, a well-known astrophysicist and imaging fan who helped create the images, was equally enthusiastic.

“New Horizons’ latest stereoscopic experiment breaks all records. These photographs by Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 – stars known to both amateur astronomers and science fiction fans – use the greatest distance between viewpoints that stereoscopy has ever achieved in 180 years was! “” he said.