Kuiper Belt tagged posts

Hubble spots a moon around the dwarf planet 2007 OR10. These two images, taken a year apart, reveal a moon orbiting the dwarf planet 2007 OR10. Each image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows the companion in a different orbital position around its parent body. 2007 OR10 is the third-largest known dwarf planet, behind Pluto and Eris, and the largest unnamed world in the solar system. The pair is located in the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from the solar system’s formation. Credits: NASA, ESA, C. Kiss (Konkoly Observatory), and J. Stansberry (STScI)

The combined power of 3 space observatories, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, has helped astronomers uncover a moon orbiting the third largest dwarf planet, catalogued as 2007 OR10...

Artist’s conception of a loosely tethered binary planetoid pair like those studied by Fraser et al. in this work which led to the conclusion that Neptune’s shepherding of them to the Kuiper Belt as gradual and gentle in nature. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA, artwork by Joy Pollard

Dr Wes Fraser from Queen’s led an international project ‘Colours of the Outer Solar Systems Origins Survey’ Col-OSSOS, which uses data collected from the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) both on Maunakea in Hawaii. By simultaneously using two world class telescopes, Dr Fraser’s team was able to produce unique research with a global impact.

The study focused on the Kuiper Belt – a region of space beyond the gas giant Neptune...

This cutaway image of Pluto shows a section through the area of Sputnik Planitia, with dark blue representing a subsurface ocean and light blue for the frozen crust. Credit: Pam Engebretson

Findings suggest other large objects in the Kuiper belt may also have liquid oceans beneath frozen shells. A liquid ocean lying deep beneath Pluto’s frozen surface is the best explanation for features revealed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, according to a new analysis. The idea that Pluto has a subsurface ocean is not new, but the study provides the most detailed investigation yet of its likely role in the evolution of key features such as the vast, low-lying plain known as Sputnik Planitia (formerly Sputnik Planum).

Sputnik Planitia, which forms one side of the famous heart-shaped feature seen in t...

Close-up of Sputnik Planum shows the slowly overturning cells of nitrogen ice. Boulders of water ice and methane debris (red) that have broken off hills surrounding the heart have collected at the boundaries of the cells. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

A large section of Pluto’s icy surface is renewed by convection that replace older ices with fresher material. Combining computer models with topographic and compositional data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last summer, New Horizons team members have been able to determine the depth of this layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto’s distinctive “heart” feature, Sputnik Planum – and how fast that ice is flowing.

Mission scientists used state-of-the-art computer simula...