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crash bang
Joined: 11 Jul 2007
Location: gwangju
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 Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Uranus is a gas giant |
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browneyedgirl
Joined: 17 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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| ChopChaeJoe wrote: |
Like what? I don't think anything even close to that size exists in the Kuiper belt. |
First Family: Pluto-size body has siblings
Ron Cowen
Shaped like a squashed football, the ice-covered body 2003 EL61 rotates faster and reflects more sunlight than any other object in the outer solar system, is about as big as Pluto, and even has two moons. Now, astronomers have discovered that this fringe object, located beyond Neptune in a region called the Kuiper belt, has another distinction. It's the first Kuiper belt denizen known to have an extended family.
Five smaller members of the belt, although not close to 2003 EL61, have nearly identical surface properties and orbits, Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and his colleagues report in the March 15 Nature. The researchers suggest that the family arose soon after the birth of the solar system, when a Pluto-size body smashed into 2003 EL61, creating the fragments that Brown's team has found.
The researchers, who discovered 2003 EL61, had already proposed that a giant impactor had pummeled the body. Such a collision could account for the 4-hour rotation of 2003 EL61, as well as its two moons and high density. The density indicates that the object was stripped of most of its ice, leaving just an icy glaze over a rocky core (SN: 1/14/06, p. 26: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060114/bob10.asp).
The familial finding firms up the collision hypothesis and is "a milestone in Kuiper belt science�and by extension, in our understanding of the outer solar system's development," says Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatory of the C�te d'Azur in Nice, France, in a commentary accompanying the Nature report.
Brown and his coworkers surveyed 50 Kuiper belt objects using the Keck 1 telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
Astronomers Discover "10th Planet"
October 4, 2005
by David Tytell
A team of astronomers using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory and the 8-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has discovered the largest Kuiper Belt object (KBO) ever.
It is bigger than Pluto.
The object, designated 2003 UB313, is currently 97 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances) away � more than twice Pluto's average distance from the Sun. This makes it the farthest object ever seen in the solar system. It is a scattered-disk object, meaning that at some point in its history, an encounter with some massive object moved it into its highly inclined (44�) orbit. It's currently glowing at magnitude 18.9 in the constellation Cetus. Its high inclination is the only reason it wasn't discovered years ago; no one was looking for planets so far from the plane of the solar system.
Discoverers Michael E. Brown (Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory), and David Rabinowitz (Yale University) first imaged the object on October 21, 2003, but didn't see it move in the sky until they reimaged the same area 15 months later, on January 8, 2005. Working backward from there, the astronomers have found old images of 2003 UB313 in much earlier surveys, allowing them to determine its orbit accurately. The object turns out to be currently near aphelion (its farthest from the Sun) in a very elliptical orbit. It ranges as close as 38 a.u. to the Sun in a 557-year orbit.
Astronomers  |
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Justin Hale
Joined: 24 Nov 2007
Location: the Straight Talk Express
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| Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| hepcat wrote: |
| Pluto is a planet in my universe. I don't care what "the news" has to say on the matter. Have any of these 'scientist' guys been there? No! Who are they to judge. "Dwarf planet" my uranus! |
Pluto is the second-largest dwarf planet. |
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ChopChaeJoe
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Ah, sorry 'bout that. Was thinking of the astroid belt. |
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dutchy pink
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:11 am Post subject: |
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There was an interesting article in Scientific American back when Pluto was demoted. Pluto was discovered in 1930 by an American, Clyde W. Tambaugh. At that time, no significant discoveries were made by an American in Astronomy. In addition, the depression was starting to get serious. American scientist lobbied hard for Pluto to be considered a planet, even though most astonomers disagreed. The feeling was that it would be a good moral booster for Americans during that troubling time. "American science still triumphs!" something like that.
-Based on the scientific defenition of a planet, it ain't. |
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endo
Joined: 14 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul...my home
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| Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:20 am Post subject: |
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| paquebot wrote: |
| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| I say Pluto should remain a planet. |
Just Pluto, Pluto and Charon together as one entity (binary planet), or Pluto and Charon as two distinct planets? I always wanted to see Charon classified as a planet in its own right, but the odds appear against that happening any time soon. |
NERD!!!!!
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