Okay, did I
manage to discover anything about more potential dwarf planets? With most
(except Ceres) so far from us, scientists often have to piece together bits of
information from several different sources. Even Hubble telescope doesn’t do
them much good, because all it showed of Pluto (the biggest dwarf) was a fuzzy
blob. So, let’s see what they’ve jigsawed together so far:
2007OR10
It doesn’t have
a name yet. But those who discovered it think they are close to deciding on
one.
The designation
means it was discovered in 2007, but it was only recently discovered that it
was much bigger than originally thought. It is the 3rd largest dwarf, right
behind Pluto and Eris, at a diameter of 955 miles [1535 km]. Its surface is
very dark (the better to soak up what little sunlight it gets?) and reddish,
and it rotates slowly - one day there is just under 45 hours long. They think
it might be covered in volatile ices of methane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen.
OR10 has an
elliptical orbit, which seems to be in fashion, that brings it close to
Neptune’s orbit, but it is currently twice as far from the sun as Pluto. How
far out does it go? I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet. I found no
indication how long it takes to complete an orbit around the sun.
But if you
really want to know the weird part about OR10, NASA’s information page stated
there had been a hint of vegetation on its surface. What do you think? Some
kind of lichen or what? I don’t think palm trees would grow there very well.
2015
RR245
Again, no name
yet. It was discovered in 2015. The animation I found about its orbit shows
that it gets to Neptune’s orbit, but then skedaddles far, far away, taking 700
years to make one trip around the sun. Its size is 435 miles [700 km], so it’s
not a huge dwarf. It will make its closest approach to the sun on this trip in
2096.
Sedna
What little I
found on Sedna was mostly from 2004. (You’d think they would have found out
more by now.) When it was discovered, Sedna was 8 billion miles [13 billion km]
from Earth, 3 times as far as Pluto. It’s red, thought to be about 1,400 miles
[2,250 km] in diameter, and there is some evidence it has a moon. It takes 10,000
years to travel around the sun. It’s very bashful, though - maybe that explains
its blush? It will get slightly closer in the next 50 years, but still won’t be
anywhere near Pluto when it starts heading back for the Inner Oort Cloud.
(Strangely, the Oort Cloud was described as ‘hypothetical’, but it shows up on all my star navigation charts.)
Quaoar
Discovered in
2002, Quaoar (pronounced kwa-whar, the name of a Native American god) lies
621,372,292 miles [1,000,000,000 km] beyond pluto in a circular orbit. Maybe it hopes to grow up to be a ‘real’ planet. It
has a ways to go, with a diameter of 808 miles [1300 km]. Quaoar is also known
as 2002 LM60.
I’d actually
forgotten about Sedna and Quaoar, it had been so long since they had been in
the news. That’s all I’ve got this week. If you still haven’t heard enough
about dwarf planets, try the website http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/dps.html
, which is updated daily by Mike Brown, an astronomer who seems to be right in
the midst of discovering a lot of them. Some of it may be over your head (it
certainly was for me), but check it out: as of 10/16/16, he listed 10 nearly
certainly, 30 highly likely, 75 likely, 147 probably, and 695 possibly dwarf
planets.
Wow! What a big
family!
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6509
http://www.space.com/33387-dwarf-planet-discovery-2015-rr245.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/planet_like_body.html
http://www.space.com/25695-sedna-dwarf-planet.html
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/07oct_newworld
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