Nomenclature in the Outer Solar System 43
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Guide to the Extended Versions of MPC Data Files Based on the MPCORB Format
Guide to the Extended Versions of MPC Data Files Based on the MPCORB Format Last updated: 2016/04/19 by J.L. Galache Introduction The Minor Planet Center (MPC) has been providing the orbits of minor planets in the form of a file, MPCORB.DAT, since the mid '90s (1990s, not 1890s). Back then there were only a few thousand known asteroids, compared to the several hundred thousand of today, so a flat text file was the appropriate way to circulate these data. It was also a time when most orbit computations were programmed in Fortran, which ingested data no other way. MPCORB.DAT has therefore always been, and continues to be, a fixed-width file (see Table 1 for the current format description1). In fact, all original data files available on the MPC website are flat text files (even the orbits files provided for planetarium-type/sky simulation software packages are simply text files of varying format2). In the early years of the 2010s, possibly due to the rising popularity of the scripting language Python amongst astronomers, and an increased interest from developers wanting to write asteroid-themed tools, requests were received to provide data in other, easier to parse formats, e.g., JSON, CSV, SQL, etc. At the same time, astronomers and developers alike wanted more information than was currently been provided in MPCORB.DAT; information that did exist on the MPC website in other, often hard to find, files. Here was an opportunity to add some new data to existing files, while also making them available in other formats. -
1 Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects
Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects - a Review Renu Malhotra Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Email: [email protected] Abstract Our understanding of the history of the solar system has undergone a revolution in recent years, owing to new theoretical insights into the origin of Pluto and the discovery of the Kuiper belt and its rich dynamical structure. The emerging picture of dramatic orbital migration of the planets driven by interaction with the primordial Kuiper belt is thought to have produced the final solar system architecture that we live in today. This paper gives a brief summary of this new view of our solar system's history, and reviews the astronomical evidence in the resonant populations of the Kuiper belt. Introduction Lying at the edge of the visible solar system, observational confirmation of the existence of the Kuiper belt came approximately a quarter-century ago with the discovery of the distant minor planet (15760) Albion (formerly 1992 QB1, Jewitt & Luu 1993). With the clarity of hindsight, we now recognize that Pluto was the first discovered member of the Kuiper belt. The current census of the Kuiper belt includes more than 2000 minor planets at heliocentric distances between ~30 au and ~50 au. Their orbital distribution reveals a rich dynamical structure shaped by the gravitational perturbations of the giant planets, particularly Neptune. Theoretical analysis of these structures has revealed a remarkable dynamic history of the solar system. The story is as follows (see Fernandez & Ip 1984, Malhotra 1993, Malhotra 1995, Fernandez & Ip 1996, and many subsequent works). -
The Minor Planets
The Minor Planets Swinburne Astronomy Online 3D PDF c SAO 2012 The Minor Planets c Swinburne Astronomy Online 2012 1 Description 1.1 Minor planets Our view of the Solar System has changed dramatically over the past 15 years with the discovery of new classes of small bodies. Mi- nor planets are another name for asteroids, or celestial bodies that orbit the Sun that are not otherwise classed as planets or comets. Generally, minor planets are relatively small rocky bodies, while comets are icy bodies that become active when their orbits carry them close to the Sun. (An \active" comet exhibits a large coma and a long tail.) The minor planets can be classified by their orbital characteristics. In this 3D PDF, we have included 5 classes of minor planets: (1) the Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), (2) the main belt asteroids, (3) the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter, (4) the Centaurs, and (5) the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). The dataset used comes from the Minor Planets Centre. As of 19 November 2012, there were 9,346 NEAs (comprising 732 Atens, 4686 Apollos and 3928 Amors); 581,613 main belt asteroids; 5,407 jovian Trojans; 330 Centaurs; and 1,150 TNOs. (Note than in this 3D PDF, we have only included 11,678 main belt asteroids.) • The Near Earth Asteroids have perihelion distances of less than 1.3 AU, and include the following sub-classes: { Atens have aphelion distances greater than 0.983 AU, and semi-major axes less than 1 AU { Apollos have perihelion distances less than 1.017 AU, and semi-major axes greater than 1 AU { Amors have perihelion distances between 1.017 and 1.3 AU and semi-major axes greater than 1 AU • The main belt asteroids reside between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, with most of the asteroids orbiting between about 2.1 AU and 3.3 AU. -
Col-OSSOS: Colors of the Interstellar Planetesimal 1I/Oumuamua
DRAFT VERSION DECEMBER 7, 2017 Typeset using LATEX twocolumn style in AASTeX61 COL-OSSOS: COLORS OF THE INTERSTELLAR PLANETESIMAL 1I/‘OUMUAMUA MICHELE T. BANNISTER,1 MEGAN E. SCHWAMB,2 WESLEY C. FRASER,1 MICHAEL MARSSET,1 ALAN FITZSIMMONS,1 SUSAN D. BENECCHI,3 PEDRO LACERDA,1 ROSEMARY E. PIKE,4 J. J. KAVELAARS,5, 6 ADAM B. SMITH,2 SUNNY O. STEWART,2 SHIANG-YU WANG,7 AND MATTHEW J. LEHNER7, 8, 9 1Astrophysics Research Centre, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom 2Gemini Observatory, Northern Operations Center, 670 North A’ohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720, USA 3Planetary Science Institute, 1700 East Fort Lowell, Suite 106, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA 4Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica; 11F AS/NTU, National Taiwan University, 1 Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 5Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 West Saanich Rd, Victoria, British Columbia V9E 2E7, Canada 6Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, Elliott Building, 3800 Finnerty Rd, Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada 7Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica; 11F of AS/NTU Astronomy-Mathematics Building, Nr. 1 Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 8Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 S. 33rd St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA 9Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (Received 2017 November 16; Revised 2017 December 4; Accepted 2017 December 6) Submitted to ApJL ABSTRACT The recent discovery by Pan-STARRS1 of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), on an unbound and hyperbolic orbit, offers a rare oppor- tunity to explore the planetary formation processes of other stars, and the effect of the interstellar environment on a planetesimal surface. -
" Tnos Are Cool": a Survey of the Transneptunian Region IV. Size
Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. SDOs˙Herschel˙Santos-Sanz˙2012 c ESO 2012 February 8, 2012 “TNOs are Cool”: A Survey of the Transneptunian Region IV Size/albedo characterization of 15 scattered disk and detached objects observed with Herschel Space Observatory-PACS? P. Santos-Sanz1, E. Lellouch1, S. Fornasier1;2, C. Kiss3, A. Pal3, T.G. Muller¨ 4, E. Vilenius4, J. Stansberry5, M. Mommert6, A. Delsanti1;7, M. Mueller8;9, N. Peixinho10;11, F. Henry1, J.L. Ortiz12, A. Thirouin12, S. Protopapa13, R. Duffard12, N. Szalai3, T. Lim14, C. Ejeta15, P. Hartogh15, A.W. Harris6, and M. Rengel15 1 LESIA-Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC Univ. Paris 6, Univ. Paris-Diderot, 5 Place J. Janssen, 92195 Meudon Cedex, France. e-mail: [email protected] 2 Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cite,´ 4 rue Elsa Morante, 75205 Paris, France. 3 Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. 4 Max–Planck–Institut fur¨ extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Garching, Germany. 5 University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. 6 Deutsches Zentrum fur¨ Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany. 7 Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, CNRS & Universite´ de Provence, Marseille. 8 SRON LEA / HIFI ICC, Postbus 800, 9700AV Groningen, Netherlands. 9 UNS-CNRS-Observatoire de la Coteˆ d0Azur, Laboratoire Cassiopee,´ BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 04, France. 10 Center for Geophysics of the University of Coimbra, Av. Dr. Dias da Silva, 3000-134 Coimbra, Portugal 11 Astronomical Observatory, University of Coimbra, Almas de Freire, 3040-004 Coimbra, Portugal 12 Instituto de Astrof´ısica de Andaluc´ıa (CSIC), Granada, Spain. 13 University of Maryland, USA. -
Comparative Kbology: Using Surface Spectra of Triton
COMPARATIVE KBOLOGY: USING SURFACE SPECTRA OF TRITON, PLUTO, AND CHARON TO INVESTIGATE ATMOSPHERIC, SURFACE, AND INTERIOR PROCESSES ON KUIPER BELT OBJECTS by BRYAN JASON HOLLER B.S., Astronomy (High Honors), University of Maryland, College Park, 2012 B.S., Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, 2012 M.S., Astronomy, University of Colorado, 2015 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences 2016 This thesis entitled: Comparative KBOlogy: Using spectra of Triton, Pluto, and Charon to investigate atmospheric, surface, and interior processes on KBOs written by Bryan Jason Holler has been approved for the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Dr. Leslie Young Dr. Fran Bagenal Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ii ABSTRACT Holler, Bryan Jason (Ph.D., Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences) Comparative KBOlogy: Using spectra of Triton, Pluto, and Charon to investigate atmospheric, surface, and interior processes on KBOs Thesis directed by Dr. Leslie Young This thesis presents analyses of the surface compositions of the icy outer Solar System objects Triton, Pluto, and Charon. Pluto and its satellite Charon are Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) while Triton, the largest of Neptune’s satellites, is a former member of the KBO population. Near-infrared spectra of Triton and Pluto were obtained over the previous 10+ years with the SpeX instrument at the IRTF and of Charon in Summer 2015 with the OSIRIS instrument at Keck. -
Syllabus for Classics 140 (#20821) Introduction to Classics
SYLLABUS FOR CLASSICS 140 (#20821) INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICS Fall 2014 Semester, San Diego State University Brett Robbins, PhD., Department of Classics & Humanities Class Hours: M/W 2-3:15 PM, Classroom: PSFA-310 Office Hours (AL-672): MW 12:30-1:45 PM (or by appointment) Phone: 805-444-2393, E-Mail: [email protected] 1) COURSE DESCRIPTION If you’re curious about your own society, you should also be curious about the ancient Greeks and Romans, because they were the inventors of western culture and you should be curious about where so much of what you take for granted comes from. It’s inherently pleasurable to trace so much of what we think and do today to their roots in ancient Greece and Rome, to make sense of their world and our own world through their world and of both worlds through their interrelationships with each other. That is, I believe, what is most special about the study of antiquity: we find, if we look closely, so many firsts in western culture: the first epic and lyric poems, the first plays, the first theaters, the first histories, even the first cinema (huh?). And through the literature of ancient Greece and Rome we encounter the first expression of certain ideas like community, democracy, and imperialism and of certain emotions like courage, curiosity, and love. If tracing things back to their roots, their origins in the past, excites you, you are in the right place, because that is what I am primarily interested in: getting back to the roots. There is more. -
Why Pluto Is Not a Planet Anymore Or How Astronomical Objects Get Named
3 Why Pluto Is Not a Planet Anymore or How Astronomical Objects Get Named Sethanne Howard USNO retired Abstract Everywhere I go people ask me why Pluto was kicked out of the Solar System. Poor Pluto, 76 years a planet and then summarily dismissed. The answer is not too complicated. It starts with the question how are astronomical objects named or classified; asks who is responsible for this; and ends with international treaties. Ultimately we learn that it makes sense to demote Pluto. Catalogs and Names WHO IS RESPONSIBLE for naming and classifying astronomical objects? The answer varies slightly with the object, and history plays an important part. Let us start with the stars. Most of the bright stars visible to the naked eye were named centuries ago. They generally have kept their old- fashioned names. Betelgeuse is just such an example. It is the eighth brightest star in the northern sky. The star’s name is thought to be derived ,”Yad al-Jauzā' meaning “the Hand of al-Jauzā يد الجوزاء from the Arabic i.e., Orion, with mistransliteration into Medieval Latin leading to the first character y being misread as a b. Betelgeuse is its historical name. The star is also known by its Bayer designation − ∝ Orionis. A Bayeri designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek letter followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation’s Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars. The Bayer designation typically assigns the letter alpha to the brightest star in the constellation and moves through the Greek alphabet, with each letter representing the next fainter star. -
Detached Objects' 4 June 2018
Collective gravity, not Planet Nine, may explain the orbits of 'detached objects' 4 June 2018 American Astronomical Society, which runs from June 3-7 in Denver. Detached objects like Sedna get their name because they complete humongous, circular orbits that bring them nowhere close to big planets like Jupiter or Neptune. How they got to the outer solar system on their own is an ongoing mystery. Credit: CC0 Public Domain Using computer simulations, Madigan's team came up with one possible answer. Jacob Fleisig, an undergraduate studying astrophysics at CU Boulder, calculated that these icy objects orbit the Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our sun like the hands of a clock. The orbits of smaller solar system—and not a mysterious ninth objects, such as asteroids, however, move faster planet—may explain the dynamics of strange than the larger ones, such as Sedna. bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study. "You see a pileup of the orbits of smaller objects to one side of the sun," said Fleisig, who is the lead CU Boulder Assistant Professor Ann-Marie author of the new research. "These orbits crash into Madigan and a team of researchers have offered the bigger body, and what happens is those up a new theory for the existence of planetary interactions will change its orbit from an oval shape oddities like Sedna. This minor planet orbits to a more circular shape." Earth's sun at a distance of 8 billion miles but appears separated from the rest of the solar In other words, Sedna's orbit goes from normal to system. -
The Kuiper Belt and the Primordial Evolution of the Solar System
Morbidelli and Brown: Kuiper Belt and Evolution of Solar System 175 The Kuiper Belt and the Primordial Evolution of the Solar System A. Morbidelli Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur M. E. Brown California Institute of Technology We discuss the structure of the Kuiper belt as it can be inferred from the first decade of observations. In particular, we focus on its most intriguing properties — the mass deficit, the inclination distribution, and the apparent existence of an outer edge and a correlation among inclinations, colors, and sizes — which clearly show that the belt has lost the pristine structure of a dynamically cold protoplanetary disk. Understanding how the Kuiper belt acquired its present structure will provide insight into the formation of the outer planetary system and its early evolution. We critically review the scenarios that have been proposed so far for the pri- mordial sculpting of the belt. None of them can explain in a single model all the observed properties; the real history of the Kuiper belt probably requires a combination of some of the proposed mechanisms. 1. INTRODUCTION A primary goal of this chapter is to present the orbital structure of the Kuiper belt as it stands based on the current When Edgeworth and Kuiper conjectured the existence observations. We start in section 2 by presenting the various of a belt of small bodies beyond Neptune — now known subclasses that constitute the transneptunian population. as the Kuiper belt — they certainly were imagining a disk Then in section 3 we describe some striking properties of of planetesimals that preserved the pristine conditions of the the population, such as its mass deficit, inclination excita- protoplanetary disk. -
Download This Article in PDF Format
A&A 564, A44 (2014) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201322041 & c ESO 2014 Astrophysics Dynamical formation of detached trans-Neptunian objects close to the 2:5 and 1:3 mean motion resonances with Neptune P. I. O. Brasil1,R.S.Gomes2, and J. S. Soares2 1 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), ETE/DMC, Av. dos Astronautas, 1758 São José dos Campos, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] 2 Observatório Nacional (ON), GPA, Rua General José Cristino, 77, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] Received 7 June 2013 / Accepted 29 January 2014 ABSTRACT Aims. It is widely accepted that the past dynamical history of the solar system included a scattering of planetesimals from a primordial disk by the major planets. The primordial scattered population is likely the origin of the current scaterring disk and possibly the detached objects. In particular, an important argument has been presented for the case of 2004XR190 as having an origin in the primordial scattered disk through a mechanism including the 3:8 mean motion resonance (MMR) with Neptune. Here we aim at developing a similar study for the cases of the 1:3 and 2:5 resonances that are stronger than the 3:8 resonance. Methods. Through a semi-analytic approach of the Kozai resonance inside an MMR, we show phase diagrams (e,ω) that suggest the possibility of a scattered particle, after being captured in an MMR with Neptune, to become a detached object. We ran several numerical integrations with thousands of particles perturbed by the four major planets, and there are cases with and without Neptune’s residual migration. -
Results from a Triple Chord Stellar Occultation and Far-Infrared Photometry of the Trans-Neptunian ?,?? Object (229762) 2007 UK126 K
A&A 600, A12 (2017) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201628620 & c ESO 2017 Astrophysics Results from a triple chord stellar occultation and far-infrared photometry of the trans-Neptunian ?,?? object (229762) 2007 UK126 K. Schindler1; 2, J. Wolf1; 2, J. Bardecker3,???, A. Olsen3, T. Müller4, C. Kiss5, J. L. Ortiz6, F. Braga-Ribas7; 8, J. I. B. Camargo7; 9, D. Herald3, and A. Krabbe1 1 Deutsches SOFIA Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 29, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 2 SOFIA Science Center, NASA Ames Research Center, Mail Stop N211-1, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA 3 International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA), USA 4 Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstrasse 1, 85748 Garching, Germany 5 Konkoly Observatory, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Konkoly Thege 15-17, 1121 Budapest, Hungary 6 Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia-CSIC, Glorieta de la Astronomia 3, 18080 Granada, Spain 7 Observatório Nacional/MCTI, Rua Gal. José Cristino 77, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 8 Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR/DAFIS), Rua Sete de Setembro 3165, 80230-901 Curitiba, PR, Brazil 9 Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia – LIneA, Rua Gal. José Cristino 77, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Received 31 March 2016 / Accepted 10 October 2016 ABSTRACT Context. A stellar occultation by a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) provides an opportunity to probe the size and shape of these distant solar system bodies. In the past seven years, several occultations by TNOs have been observed, but mostly from a single location. Only very few TNOs have been sampled simultaneously from multiple locations.