Pluto and kuiper belt

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Pluto and Kuiper Belt Roldan S. Pagaduan

Transcript of Pluto and kuiper belt

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Pluto and Kuiper Belt

Roldan S. Pagaduan

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Kuiper Belt

• The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region beyond Neptune that extends from about 30 to 55 astronomical units.

• This distant region is probably populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 100 km (62 miles) across and an estimated trillion or more comets.

• Dwarf planet Pluto may be the best known of the larger objects in the Kuiper Belt.

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Kuiper Belt

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Kuiper Belt

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Kuiper Belt

• The first of these strange bodies, which astronomers call Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), came to light in 1992, discovered by Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu.

• Beginning in 1987 they had doggedly scanned the heavens in search of dim objects beyond Neptune.

• Jewitt (University of Hawaii) and Luu (UC Berkeley) wanted to name their find "Smiley," but it has since been cataloged as "1992 QB1."

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Kuiper Belt

• That discovery marked our first glimpse of the long-sought Kuiper Belt, named after Gerard Kuiper who, in 1951, proposed that a belt of icy bodies might lay beyond Neptune.

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Kuiper Belt

In July 2005, a team of scientists announced the discovery of a KBO that was initially thought to be about 10 percent larger than Pluto. The object, temporarily designated 2003UB313 and later named Eris, orbits the sun about once every 560 years, its distance varying from about 38 to 98 AU. Eris has a small moon named Dysnomia. More recent measurements show it to be slightly smaller than Pluto.

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Kuiper Belt

• The discovery of Eris -- orbiting the sun and similar in size to Pluto (which was then designated the ninth planet) -- forced astronomers to consider whether Eris should be classified as the tenth planet. Instead, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union created a new class of objects called dwarf planets, and placed Pluto, Eris and the asteroid Ceres in this category.

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Kuiper Belt

• In 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, making the first up-close exploration of a Kuiper Belt Object. The spacecraft is continuing deeper into this region of icy debris and may be able to explore at least one more object.

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Pluto

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Pluto

• Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh from the United States.

• Pluto was known as the smallest planet in the solar system and the ninth planet from the sun.

• Today, Pluto is called a “dwarf planet.”• On average, Pluto is more than 3.6 billion miles

(5.8 billion kilometers) away from the sun.

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Pluto

• Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl from England, Venetia Burney.

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Pluto

• Pluto has five moons. Its largest moon is named Charon. Charon is about half the size of Pluto. Pluto's four other moons are named Kerberos, Styx, Nix and Hydra.

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Why Is Pluto Not Called a Planet Anymore?

• In 2003, an astronomer saw a new object beyond Pluto. The astronomer thought he had found a new planet. The object he saw was larger than Pluto. He named the object Eris.

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Why Is Pluto Not Called a Planet Anymore?

• Pluto is also called a plutoid. A plutoid is a dwarf planet that is farther out in space than the planet Neptune. The three known plutoids are Pluto, Eris and Makemake.

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What Is Pluto Like?

• Pluto is very, very cold. The temperature on Pluto is 375 to 400 degrees below zero. Pluto is so far away from Earth that scientists know very little about what it is like. Pluto is probably covered with ice.

• Pluto has about one-fifteenth the gravity of Earth. A person who weighs 100 pounds on Earth would weigh only 7 pounds on Pluto.

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What Is Pluto Like?

• Most planets orbit the sun in a near-circle. The sun is in the center of the circle. But Pluto does not orbit in a circle! The orbit of Pluto is shaped like an oval. And the sun is not in the center. Pluto's orbit is also tilted.

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Pluto

• In 2006, NASA launched the first mission to Pluto. It is called New Horizons. New Horizons is a spacecraft that is going to the edge of the solar system. The spacecraft is about the size of a piano. It was a nine-year trip to reach Pluto. In 2015, New Horizons arrived at Pluto. The mission will spend more than five months studying Pluto and its moons. New Horizons will then study other objects in the Kuiper Belt.