Kuiper Belt Objects, Dwarf Planets Like Pluto and Eris Classified

Kuiper Belt (Pluto)
LACC: §12.3, 12.4, 13.3

• Understand how the various object in the
outer solar system are classiﬁed
• Understand what conditions and processes
shaped these objects
• Know the dwarf planets: Pluto, Eris.
An attempt to answer the “big questions”: what is
out there? Are we alone?

Thursday, April 8, 2010 1

Transneptunian Objects (TNOs)
8 Largest

Top row are all artist's
dwarf planets conceptions
http://www.astronomynow.com/ThomasMuellerInterview.html


The Outer Solar System

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/OuterPlot.html


Trans-Neptunian Objects

While wikipedia is not as reliable as a .gov or .edu site, this illustration was too good to pass up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Neptunian_object


Centaurs
95P/Chiron, the ﬁrst ofﬁcial Centaur P/2004 A1
centaur, around 200 km (LONEOS)

http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/mn/07/img/ http://www.aanda.org/index.php?
index.html option=article&access=standard&I
temid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/
2006/48/aa5189-06/
aa5189-06.right.html

The largest known centaur is (10199) Chariklo at 200--250 km.
http://aas.org/archives/BAAS/v37n3/dps2005/446.htm


Kuiper Belt Objects: Pluto
The IAU members
gathered at the 2006
General Assembly agreed
that a "planet" is deﬁned
as a celestial body that
(a) is in orbit around the
Sun
(b) has sufﬁcient mass for
its self-gravity to
overcome rigid body
forces so that it assumes
a hydrostatic equilibrium
(nearly round) shape
(c) has cleared the
neighborhood around its
orbit.
http://www.iau.org/public_press/
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010319.html
news/detail/iau0603/


KBO and Dwarf Planet Pluto
Little is known about Pluto's
atmosphere, but it probably consists
primarily of nitrogen with some
carbon monoxide and methane. It is
extremely tenuous, the surface
pressure being only a few microbars.
Pluto's atmosphere may exist as a
gas only when Pluto is near its
perihelion; for the majority of Pluto's
long year, the atmospheric gases are
frozen into ice. Near perihelion, it is
likely that some of the atmosphere
escapes to space perhaps even
interacting with Charon. NASA
mission planners want to arrive at
Pluto while the atmosphere is still
unfrozen.

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/pluto.htm


Pluto and Charon: A binary
planetary system?

This model system has been artiﬁcially lit and reoriented so that its equator lies in a
horizontal plane. The scale of time has been altered so that 2 days of simulated time
pass in 1 second of real time.

http://www.planetsalive.com/?planet=Pluto&tab=E


Currently, the largest
KBO / SDO: Eris known dwarf planet is
(136199) Eris. Eris is
just slightly larger
than Pluto, but orbits
as far as twice Pluto's
distance from the
Sun. Eris is shown
above in an image
taken by a 10-meter
Keck Telescope from
Hawaii, USA. Like
Pluto, Eris has a
moon, which has
been ofﬁcially named
by the International
Astronomical Union
as (136199) Eris I
(Dysnomia). Eris was
discovered in 2003,
and is likely
composed of frozen
water-ice and
methane. Currently,
the only other
ofﬁcially designated
"dwarf planet" is (1)
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060918.html Ceres.

Dwarf Planets on Parade

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/our_solar_system/dwarf_planets/images/
ﬁve_dwarfs_earth_luna_big_jpg_image.html&edu=high


Dwarf Planets to Scale
Three dwarf planets along side some
well known moons. (There are other
moons and dwarf planets within this size
range that are not shown.)

Eris

http://astro.berkeley.edu/~basri/deﬁneplanet/


Kuiper Belt (Pluto)
LACC: §12.3, 12.4, 13.3
• Understand how the various object in the
outer solar system are classiﬁed: Centaurs,
Kuiper Belt Objects, Scattered Disk Objects
• Understand what conditions and processes
shaped these objects: formed outside orbit of
Neptune, near collisions throw them out of the
Kuiper Belt--Centaurs, SDOs, rogue planet?
• Know the dwarf planets: Pluto (w/ Charon,
Hydra, and Nix), Eris (w/ Dysnomia) is largest.
out there? Are we alone?


LACC HW: Franknoi, Morrison, and
Wolff, Voyages Through the Universe,
3rd ed.

• Ch 12, pp. 286: 6.
Due at the beginning of next class period.
Test covering chapters 10-13 next class period.
Be working your Solar System project.


Comets
LACC: §12.3, 12.4, 13.3
• Know how Meteorites are classiﬁed:
composition (laboratory analysis)
• Understand under what conditions and
processes the comets formed: formed outside
orbit of Neptune, near collisions alter throw
them out of the Kuiper Belt
• Know what Comets tell us about the
conditions and processes shaped our solar
system: Comets tell us about our solar
system: composition and history.


Comets

http://cometography.com/lcomets/2006p1.html


Comet Halley

http://lpmpjogja.diknas.go.id/kc/c/comet/comet.htm

Oort Cloud: Morphology

100 000 AU is about 1.5 light years.
The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 lightyears away.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6949/ﬁg_tab/nature01725_ft.html

Kuiper Belt vs. Oort Cloud

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6949/ﬁg_tab/nature01725_ft.html


The Parts of a Comet

http://www.galaxyexplorers.org/newsletter/comet_fun_facts.asp

A Sun Grazing Comt
...Comet SOHO-6, one
of numerous sungrazing
comets...as its head
enters the equatorial
solar wind region. It
eventually plunged into
the Sun. ...
23 December 1996....
The ﬁeld of view of this
coronagraph
encompasses 8.4 million
kilometers (5.25 million
miles) of the inner
heliosphere.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/xmascomet.html


Comet Tails

http://www.nasa.gov/lb/audience/forkids/home/CS_Ten_Facts_About_Comets.html


Comets: Composition
Conventional wisdom is that “Comets are ... dirty snowballs or
"icy mudballs". They are a mixture of ices (both water and frozen
gases) and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into
planets when the solar system was formed. This makes them very
interesting as samples of the early history of the solar
system.” (http://www.nineplanets.org/comets.html)

However, data from the Startdust mission “...implies that while the
comets contain ices that formed at the edge of the solar system,
the rocky materials that actually make up the bulk of a comet's
mass actually formed in the hottest possible conditions. The inner
solar system can be thought of as a factory producing rocky
materials that were distributed outwards to all the bodies and
regions of the solar system.” (http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/
news113.html)


Comets: Composition
One of the most remarkable particles found in
the Stardust collection is a particle named
after the Inca Sun God Inti. Inti is collection of
rock fragments that are all related in
mineralogical, isotopic and chemical
composition to rare components in
meteorites called "Calcium Aluminum
Inclusions" or CAI's for short. CAI's are the
oldest materials that formed in the solar
system and they contain a remarkable set of
minerals that form at extremely high
temperature. In addition to these same
minerals, Inti also has tiny inclusions that may
have been the ﬁrst generation of solids to
condense from hot gas in the early solar
system. These include compounds of titanium,
vanadium and nitrogen (TiN and VN) as well as
tiny nuggets of platinum, osmium, ruthenium,
tungsten and molybdenum. In certain chemical
environments and at high enough temperature
in the early solar system these exotic
materials were the only solid materials that
could survive without being vaporized.
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news113.html

Comets on Parade
Temple 1
9 km
0.6 gm/cm3
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050910/bob9.asp

Borrelly
8 km

Wild 2
5 km
0.36 gm/cm3
http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v36n4/dps2004/317.htm

http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/proﬁle.cfm?
Object=Comets&Display=Gallery


Comet Halley
The nucleus of Comet Halley is approximately 16x8x8 kilometers.
The density of Halley's nucleus is very low: about 0.1 gm/cm3
indicating that it is probably porous, perhaps because it is largely
dust remaining after the ices have sublimed away. (http://
www.nineplanets.org/halley.html)


Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck
Jupiter in 1994


Meteor Showers are Caused
by Comets
When Earth’s orbit passes
through a trail of comet debris,
there are many meteors visible
in a single night--a meteor
shower. The Earth passes
through the meteoroids from
the comet in the same place
each year as it goes around the
Sun, so meteor showers occur
annually. For example, every
August we can see the beautiful
Perseid meteor shower, caused
by the dusty trail that Comet
Swift-Tuttle left behind.
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/SegwayEd/lessons/cometstale/com2place.html


Meteor Showers

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/showers.html

More extensive listings of meteor showers can be found, e.g.
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/shower_list.html


Comets
LACC: §12.3, 12.4, 13.3
• Understand what conditions and processes shaped
the comets: rocky materials -- inner solar system, icy
materials -- outer solar system
• Know what Comets tell us about our solar system:
potentially unchanged since they formed, they reveal
the early solar system’s composition and condition.
• Understand how meteor showers are related to
comets: Earth passes through/near a comet’s orbit
and encounters its dust.
An attempt to answer the “big questions”: what is out
there? Are we alone?


LACC HW: Franknoi, Morrison, and
Wolff, Voyages Through the Universe,
3rd ed.

• Ch 12, pp. 286: 4.
Due at the beginning of next class period.
Test covering chapters 10-13 next class period.
Be working your Solar System project.


Review for the Test 3 of 5:
The Outer Solar System
[10 pts] Identify objects from a picture. [10 pts] Asteroids, Comets, etc.
• Jupiter. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune • Location: asteroids--asteroid belt, Trojan asteroids
• Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Triton (some meteorites came from the Luna, Mars,
• asteroids, comets (parts: nucleus, coma, dust tail, Vesta); transneptunian objects--Centaurs (between
ion tail), Pluto (w/ Charon, Nix, and Hydra) Jupiter and Neptune), Kuiper belt (50 - 100 AU,
outside the orbit of Neptune), Oort Comet Cloud
[10 pts] Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (random elliptical orbits out to 100,000 AU
• Physical properties: mass, size, composition, ring • Composition: asteroids--C, S, and M type;
systems meteorites--iron, stoney iron, stoney (includes
• Orbital properties: axial tilt (Uranus is on its side), carbonaceous chondrites)); comets--parts
length of day, length of year, distance from the sun (nucleus, coma, tail (ion and dust))
• Atmospheres: composition (H, He, etc.), clouds • Notable: Minor Planets--Ceres, Pluto (w/ moons),
(H2O, (NH4)SH, NH3, CH4) depending on the Eris; Centaurs--Chiron; Ida w/ moon Dactyl;
different molecules’ condensation temperatures comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

[10 pts] Moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, [10 pts] Solar System Evolution
Saturn: Titan; and Neptune Triton. • Ring Systems: composition (ices, rocky material),
• Physical and orbital properties: mass, size, origin (moons wander inside Roche limit, debris
composition (Europa and Ganymede may have from meteor impacts on small moons), evolution
significant water oceans under their crust), (shepherd moons keep them tidy, orbital
distance from their planet, Triton orbits resonances with major moons), bright vs dark
backwards, Rhea might have rings (young & icy vs old & dusty)
• Surface features: craters (esp. Callisto), volcanic • Outer planet’s moons (differentiation?), KBOs,
activity (Io, Triton, Enceladus), what causes these comets: icy--outside frost line
moons to be geologically active (tidal forces, • Undifferentiated asteroids are the oldest objects
erupting substances may not be not lava) known (over 4.5 billion years old); differentiated
• Titan’s atmosphere: composition (N2, 1.6 bars), asteroids may be parts of early planetesimals;
methane (CH4) seas and rain? asteroids and comets are samples of the early solar
system containing organic compounds like amino
acids--the building blocks of life


Kuiper Belt Objects, Dwarf Planets Like Pluto and Eris Classified

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