Ultima

See also: ultima, ultimá, última, and ùltima

English

Etymology 1

Proper noun

Ultima

1. A town in Victoria, Australia.

Etymology 2

Clipping of Ultima Thule. Coined in January 2019 by the NASA team investigators of the New Horizons program (see quotations below).

Proper noun

Ultima

1. The larger lobe of the trans-Neptunian object Ultima Thule, a contact binary object.
   • 2019 January 24, Stern, S. A., J. R. Spencer, H. A. Weaver, C. B. Olkin, J. M. Moore, W. Grundy, R. Gladstone et al., “Overview of initial results from the reconnaissance flyby of a Kuiper Belt planetesimal: 2014 MU69”, in arXiv‎^[1]:

     For the purposes of discussion, MU₆₉’s larger and smaller lobes have been informally designated “Ultima” and “Thule,” respectively, by the New Horizons team. Ultima and Thule have best-fit measured diameters of ~19.5 and ~14.2km, respectively, with errors of only a few percent at this time.

   • 2020, Umurhan, O. M., J. T. Keane, R. A. Beyer, M. Bird, I. Linscott, S. B. Porter, J. R. Spencer et al., “Thermophysical, Gravitational, and Geomorphology Properties of 2014 MU69”, in Abstracts of the 235th AAS Meeting (Honolulu, HI), page 717:

     Ultima and Thule have similar colors with measured albedos ∼0.06, indicating that UT is a typical member of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt class of objects.

Coordinate terms

• Thule (the smaller lobe of Ultima Thule)

Etymology 3

Proper noun

Ultima

1. Synonym of Baroque (“chess variant”)

Anagrams

• Iatmul, Latium, mulita