All posts tagged: Kuiper

Astronomers Are Closing In on the Kuiper Belt’s Secrets

Astronomers Are Closing In on the Kuiper Belt’s Secrets

Published by skeptic

Out beyond the orbit of Neptune lies an expansive ring of ancient relics, dynamical enigmas, and possibly a hidden planet—or two. The Kuiper Belt, a region of frozen debris about 30 to 50 times farther from the sun than the Earth is—and perhaps farther, though nobody knows—has been shrouded in mystery since it first came into view in the 1990s. Over the past 30 years, astronomers have cataloged about 4,000 Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), including a smattering of dwarf worlds, icy comets, and leftover planet parts. But that number is expected to increase tenfold in the coming years as observations from more advanced telescopes pour in. In particular, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will illuminate this murky region with its flagship project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which began operating last year. Other next-generation observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will also help to bring the belt into focus. “Beyond Neptune, we have a census of what’s out there in the solar system, but it’s a patchwork …

Astronomers discover previously unseen kernel structure inside the Kuiper Belt

Astronomers discover previously unseen kernel structure inside the Kuiper Belt

Published by Jenni Sidey

Astronomers at Princeton University have uncovered evidence that the outer solar system is more structured than long believed. Led by astrophysics doctoral student Amir Siraj, the research points to a compact, previously unseen cluster of icy bodies inside the Kuiper Belt. The finding suggests that distant solar system orbits still hold clues about how the planets moved billions of years ago. The Kuiper Belt lies beyond Neptune and contains countless frozen remnants left over from planet formation. For years, astronomers thought they had identified its main features. One of the most prominent is the “kernel,” a tight grouping of objects on calm, low-tilt orbits about 44 astronomical units from the Sun. An astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between Earth and the Sun. The new study shows that this familiar picture may be incomplete. Using a data-mining technique borrowed from stellar astronomy, Siraj and his colleagues found signs of a second compact structure just inside the known kernel. They call it the “inner kernel,” a group of Kuiper Belt objects clustered around 43 …

We’ve found an unexpected structure in the solar system’s Kuiper belt

We’ve found an unexpected structure in the solar system’s Kuiper belt

Published by skeptic

An artist’s impression of the Kuiper belt ESO/M. Kornmesser The Kuiper belt, a disc of icy rocks on the outermost edges of the solar system, seems to have more structure than we thought. In 2011, researchers found a cluster of objects there on similar orbits that they dubbed the “kernel” of the Kuiper belt – now, another team has spotted an even more compact cluster of objects that they are calling the “inner kernel”. The original kernel was found by eye using plots of the orbits of 189 Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). It is about 44 astronomical units from the sun, where one astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth. Since the discovery of the kernel, no additional structures have been found in the Kuiper belt. That is, until Amir Siraj at Princeton University in New Jersey and his colleagues took on the painstaking task of refining the orbital data from 1650 KBOs and feeding it into an algorithm that searches for clustering and structure. They trained the algorithm to search for …