Thule Tide

I'm really heartened by the current activity in space exploration lately, we have the JPL Mars Lander InSight checking for marsquakes, OSIRIS Rex has gone into orbit around planet killing asteroid Bennu and discovered water and on New Years Day, New Horizons probe (of Pluto fame) will pass on a close flight to Ultima Thule, the most distant object ever observed in the solar system.

Ultima Thule sits in the Kuiper Belt and is regarded as a 'planetismimal' or micro-planet. Radar echoes seem to suggest that it is possibly a binary asteroid of two large bodies compressed together, but the suns light barely reaches into these remote depths, so optical imaging is difficult. Long range scans seem to indicate that the surface is darker than coal, with a reddish hue, but New Horizons will pass just over 2000 miles from the surface; closer than its recent pass to Pluto on January 1.