NASAs New Horizons spacecraft changed our view of the outer solar system forever when it flew by Pluto in 2015. Now, its on its way to the next destination: a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known only as 2014 MU69. Although the spacecraft wont reach its target until New Years Day in 2019, NASA is already looking ahead to learn as much about 2014 MU69 as possible, thanks to a convenient temporary alignment that recently allowed the object to pass in front of a background star.

The passage, called an occultation, occurs when objects line up in the sky as viewed from Earth. When an object, such as an asteroid, planet, dwarf planet, or KBO, passes in front of a distant star, astronomers can watch the way the starlight dims and returns to gain information about the object passing in front of it. This information can include size, shape, and even whether the object possesses rings, moons, or an atmosphere.

The recent occultation was visible from the Southern Hemisphere; the New Horizons team used 24 mobile telescopes in Argentina to view the event, which lasted only about two seconds. This effort, which thus far has yielded five successful occultation detections, is vital to the characterization of 2014 MU69 before New Horizons arrives. Thats because this tiny, distant object is poorly understood; currently, its believed to span about 14-25 miles in diameter (22-40 kilometers), but little else is known about its shape and composition thus far.

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New Horizons' next target: spotted - Astronomy Magazine