The Kuiper Belt is an icy-bodied disc shapes area of the Solar System. Kuiper Belt has a circular shape, to be exact, it is a curved plane. It is over 4.5 to 7.4 billion kilometers from Sun. This is roughly 30 to 50 times the distance of Earth from Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been said to resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named …show more content…
It was at first thought to be bigger than Pluto later it ended up being somewhat smaller than Pluto. Eris finishes one rotation around the Sun in 580 years. Eris is the reason why Pluto’s planetary status was changed to being a dwarf planet. The Kuiper Belt has a section called Classic Kuiper Belt. This is the busiest area of this belt and is situated at a distance of around 42 to 48 AU. In the beginning, when the solar system was created gas, dust and rocks, came together to form planets. Most of the debris was swept away by gravitational pull for those planets, but some debris survived because they were far enough away to not be affected by the gravitational pull for those planets. Finding the Kuiper Belt gave us more insight into the mystery of the objects located in the Kuiper belt. Most KBO’s are so far away that their measurements cannot be concretely calculated. By using the data collected by the Spitzer space Telescope most of the KBO’s have known sizes. In 2015 the New Horizon Spacecraft flew past Pluto for an up close exploration of the Kuiper Belt Objects. The primary real expectation of the Kuiper belt's presence, most planetary researchers now agree, originated from Uruguayan cosmologist Julio …show more content…
In the first place, it is likely that the Kuiper Belt articles are to great degree primitive leftovers from the early growth periods of the close planetary system. The inward, thick parts of the pre-planetary plate consolidated into the significant planets, likely inside a couple of millions to a huge number of years. The external parts were less thick, and growth advanced gradually. Obviously, a large number of little protests were framed. Second, it is generally trusted that the Kuiper Belt is the wellspring of the brief time frame comets. It goes about as a store for these bodies similarly that the Oort Cloud goes about as a supply for the long stretch comets. The 'powerfully cool Kuiper belt' comprises of articles on low inclination circles somewhere around, 40 and, 50 AU from the Sun. It presently contains material totaling not exactly a tenth the mass of the Earth, which is shockingly low on the grounds that, as indicated by accumulation models, the items would not have developed to their estimated size unless the icy Kuiper belt initially contained tens of Earth masses of solids. Although a few instruments have been proposed to create the watched mass consumption, they all have critical
Our Solar System was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago during the Big Bang with the collapse of an interstellar body (Lammer et al., 2009). During these supernova explosions, the dusts and gases that were expelled were mixed and processed to form the planets of our system (Lammer et al., 2009, Nisbet and Sleep, 2001).
Trappist-1 is a white dwarf , having a mass equivalent to only 8% of the mass of our sun. A white dwarf surrounded by seven planets all rocky and of a size similar to the Earth. The discovery of such a system is a first for NASA, which used the Trappist telescope in Chile to study it and the Spitzer
Neptune was discovered through a discrepancy in Uranus’s orbit. Uranus’s orbit was not moving how astronomers predicted it would. They could not find an elliptical orbit that fit Uranus’s trajectory. They therefore assumed that there had to be another planet that’s gravitational pull was effecting Uranus. Johann Galle was the first to find Neptune in 1846, even though many before him had mathematically predicted where this new planet would be. The planet was named Neptune and two astronomers who had predicted mathematically where it would be are credited with finding it not Galle.
Although Pluto was discovered in 1930, limited information on the distant planet delayed a realistic understanding of its characteristics. Today Pluto remains the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft, yet an increasing amount of information is unfolding about this peculiar planet. The uniqueness of Pluto's orbit, rotational relationship with its satellite, spin axis, and light variations all give the planet a certain appeal.
Jonathan and Ruby meet on an island where they are both attending a “marine biology research station” (221) where both of their lives are changed forever. Andrea Barrett’s “The Littoral Zone” recounts how the pair grew from being friends to becoming lovers. The first twelve days of their stay there the two paid very little attention to each other. However after they truly converse for the first time on the “granite ledge where they sat” (223) they became companions. It is in the littoral zone that Jonathan and Ruby first begin to notice, and later fall for, each other. The littoral zone is described as being “between high and low watermarks and where organisms struggle to adapt”(223). This parallels how their relationship ends up being neither a high nor low point in their lives and how they struggle to deal the the repercussions of their decisions.
This is the Scholarly Journal Archive. 2. Letters Planet Pluto Gerard P. Kuiper Science, New Series, Vol. 124, No. 2 -. 3216. The. Aug. 17, 1956, p. 322.
I believe that this situation can be paralleled by many earlier human scientific discovery. Discovering something never before known, and altering the natural world around us is the entire point of science. This can be seen in almost the same light as the battle between geocentric and heliocentric. One group believing that they are unique in the universe and that all other matter in the galaxy literally revolves around them. This point of view will be destroyed, as it was over five hundred years ago by Copernicus, and much like then there will be backlash. Perhaps not coming from the catholic church, but if and when contact is made with extraterrestrial intelligence, I would not be shocked if there is some cognitive dissonance and attempts
In Kelly Dickersons’NASAS vist to Pluto has scientists debating the defention of a planet’ it is stated that there are many other objects in the Kuiper belt(where Pluto is found) that are just like Pluto as even around the same size of Pluto. If we were to consider Pluto a classical planetn wouldn't we have to consider all the objects just like it to be one as
Asteroids can be found orbiting the Sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter; this is called the Asteroid belt or Main belt. The asteroid belt has been said to probably contain millions of asteroids that are all different. There are more than 20,000 numbered asteroids. Some times asteroids get knocked off the asteroid belt. As asteroids revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits, Jupiter’s gravity and getting to close to Mars or another asteroid can change an asteroids path, this could send an asteroid out of the asteroid belt and into space across the orbits of other planets. An example of asteroid orbits changing is Mar’s moons Phobos and Deimos. These were asteroids that went to close to Mars and got caught in its orbit.
Despite the fact that humans have been observing comets for centuries, we still don’t know all there is to know about them. The three main parts that make a comet are its tail, coma and nucleus. The tail, made of a narrow column of dust and gas, is its largest part and may extend 100 million kilometers across the inner solar system. The tail is only visible when a comet is within 3 AU’s of the Sun. The coma is a cloud of gas which can have a diameter of 100,000 kilometers. The heat of the Sun makes this gas by boiling the core or the nucleus of the comet. The nucleus of a comet is often called a giant “iceberg” or “dirty snowball”. The nucleus is a block of ice and has an irregular mass and a diameter of about 10 kilometers. The Oort cloud, an assemblage of trillions of icy bodies, is a spherical shell that completely surrounds the Solar System. Its distance is between five thousand and 100 thousand AU. It is believed that long-period comets that now orbit the Sun were originally from the Oort cloud. Short-period comets come from the Kupier belt. The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped ring, extending just beyond the orbit of Neptune from about 30 to 55 AU. ("Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud: Overview," n.d.) Astronomers also presume that this is the origin of Halley’s Comet. Halley’s Comet is considered a short-period comet, returning at time intervals less than 200 years. Halley’s Comet is also the brightes...
Perhaps one of the most interesting features of our fathomless universe are the planets that are classified as gas giants. Huge, turbulent, and distant, the gas giants are some of the most enigmatic features in our Solar System. I have a personal interest to the gas giants and celestial bodies in general. When I was a child, I was fascinated by our Solar System. I read innumerable books about space, and my interests of outer space had been piqued further by other forms of media. Although I held this interest of space, growing up left me with little time to learn about space, and I lost interest for a while. Taking Earth Science in Milpitas High re-invigorated my interests in the celestial bodies. Using this class, I’m now able to focus on learning more about our colossal universe, in particular, the outer planets.
The Andromeda Galaxy is the Milky Way Galaxy’s closest neighbor; with it being around 2.5 million lightyears away from Earth. It was once referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older readings. It gets its name from the Andromeda constellation which in turn received its name from the Greek goddess Andromeda.
2,870,990,000 km (19.218 AU) from the Sun, Uranus hangs on the wall of space as a mysterious blue green planet. With a mass of 8.683e25 kg and a diameter of 51,118 km at the equator, Uranus is the third largest planet in our solar system. It has been described as a planet that was slugged a few billion years ago by a large onrushing object, knocked down (never to get up), and now proceeds to roll around an 84-year orbit on its belly. As the strangest of the Jovian planets, the description is accurate. Uranus has a 17 hour and 14 minute day and takes 84 years to make its way about the sun with an axis tilted at around 90° with retrograde rotation. Stranger still is the fact that Uranus' axis is almost parallel to the ecliptic, hence the expression "on its belly".
Pluto is located 7.5 billion kilometers from Earth and is only over 2,000 km in diameter. Pluto has been labeled both a planet and a dwarf planet over the years. As said by USA Today, “a planet is a celestial body that: is in orbit around the sun, is round or nearly round, and has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit, meaning it is not surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics.” Pluto only follows two of the three rules of a planet. Pluto crosses over Neptune’s orbit and is near other dwarf planets like it. Even though it breaks one rule it was officially named a dwarf planet in “August 2006”, as stated by the Library of Congress. After this event Pluto still only has one correct classification. Pluto is a planet because
Our solar system has eight planets, their moons and satellites, and they are all orbiting the Sun. The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto used to be the ninth planet but IAU changed the definition of planet and Pluto did not meet the standards so it is now a Dwarf planet.