Minor Planet Leads To New Knowledge About Comets
Posted on: Tuesday, 19 August 2008, 08:30 CDT
According to researchers, a newly discovered “minor planet” may help explain how comets are created.
The new object, dubbed 2006 SQ372, is starting the outward portion of its elongated 22,500 year orbit, leaving it nearly 150 billion miles from the Sun at its farthest point.
On Monday, researchers said the icy object was over 2 billion miles from Earth, slightly closer than the planet Neptune. The researchers’ findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
According to University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, the object’s orbit is four times longer than it is wide, and is similar to Sedna, a Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003. The object is also nearly 60 miles in diameter.
"It's basically a comet, but it never gets close enough to the Sun to develop a long, bright tail of evaporated gas and dust," said Becker, who also lead the team of researchers.
Nathan Kaib, a University of Washington graduate student, believes 2006 SQ372 "could have formed, like Pluto, in the belt of icy debris beyond Neptune, then been kicked a large distance by a gravitational encounter with Neptune or Uranus.”
Although Kaib believes it is more likely that the object came from the Oort Cloud, a reservoir of icy, astroid-like objects that orbit the Sun at a distance several trillion miles away.
"One of our goals is to understand the origin of comets, which are among the most spectacular celestial events. But the deeper goal is to look back into the early history of our solar system and piece together what was happening when the planets formed," Kaib said.
---
Image Caption: A "minor planet" with an elongated orbit around the Sun. (Ohio State University)
---
On the Net:
Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
Related Articles
- Hubble Sees Planet Orbiting Another Star
- Herbalife Provides Research Grant to University of Mississippi
- Still-Forming Solar System May Have Planets Orbiting Star in Opposite Directions
- Scientists Confirm Sighting of Planet Orbiting Distant Star
- Researcher From Columbia University in New York Wins Nobel Prize
- Two Planets the Size of Neptune Discovered
- Small, Simple Telescopes Used to Discover Planet Orbiting Star
- Scientists Discover Planet Orbiting Star in Orion
- Earthlike Planets Might Be Common in the Universe
- Russia to orbit foreign research satellites
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds