Skip to comments.
Astronomers Find a New Planet in Solar System
The New York Times ^
| 7/29/05
| KENNETH CHANG
Posted on 07/29/2005 3:35:26 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
Add a 10th planet to the solar system - or possibly subtract one.
Astronomers announced today that they have found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will likely rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto should still be regarded as one.
The new object - as yet unnamed - is currently 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. But its 560-year orbit also brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's elliptical orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles.
The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is at least as large as Pluto.
"It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech, who led the team that made the discovery. "Even if it were 100 percent reflective, it would be larger than Pluto. It can't be more than 100 percent reflective."
The discovery was made Jan. 8 using a 48-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory. The astronomers, however, were not able to see it using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which looks at infrared light. That means the planet is less than 1,800 miles in diameter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News
KEYWORDS: astronomy; p4; p5; planetx; pluto; solarsystem; space; xplanets
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-60, 61-80, 81-100, 101-115 next last
81
posted on
10/02/2005 10:09:37 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
I propose either:
Brown's Planet
or
Mike's.
82
posted on
10/07/2005 10:59:44 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
To: vannrox
83
posted on
10/22/2005 10:36:44 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
To: Right Wing Professor; FairOpinion; Swordmaker; vannrox; KevinDavis
bummer, not a planet, just a really big asteroid, reminiscent of Toutatis:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/2003EL61/
"2003 EL61 is one of the strangest known objects in the solar system. It is a big across as Pluto, but shaped like a cigar. Or perhaps like a football [American-style]. Or, most accurately, a foot ball that has too little air in it and has been stepped on. It spins on its axis every 4 hours like a football that has been kicked. It appears to be made almost entirely of rock, but with a glaze of ice over the surface. And it is surrounded by two satellites... Very soon 2003 EL61 will get a real name, much like Sedna and Quaoar and Orcus. But when first discovered these objects are only given 'preliminary designations' until they are confirmed and well know. There is little need of confirmation of 2003 EL61 as it has now been seen after the fact in images from more than 50 years ago! We will thus propose a name to the International Astronomical Union and that name will become the permanent -- and with luck more melodious -- name of 2003 EL61."
graphic:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/2003EL61/rotate.gif
84
posted on
11/29/2005 5:05:10 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated my FR profile on Wednesday, November 2, 2005.)
speakin' of Toutatis:
Huge asteroid to fly past Earth (Toutatis hoax - how and why)
space.com | 04/09/29
Posted on 09/29/2004 5:00:09 AM PDT by Truth666 [no longer with us]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1230167/posts
"This is the text that media use to sell this hoax. (see http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/28/asteriod.fly/index.html). Astronomers know nothing about the universe, except for a few large bodies with regular orbits. Any idiot should have understood that the latest by April 14, 2004, as comet Bradfield (diameter : 10,000 km) popped out of nowhere to become the largest body ever recorded in the inner solar system."
85
posted on
11/29/2005 5:59:09 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated my FR profile on Wednesday, November 2, 2005.)
To: Right Wing Professor
87
posted on
12/26/2005 8:54:19 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
("In silence, and at night, the Conscience feels that life should soar to nobler ends than Power.")
To: PetroniusMaximus
Can we send the liberals there?That would be called "deportation to point of origin".
89
posted on
12/28/2005 12:05:53 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
("In silence, and at night, the Conscience feels that life should soar to nobler ends than Power.")
To: FairOpinion; sourcery
90
posted on
02/01/2006 11:53:20 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(In the long run, there is only the short run.)
To: Right Wing Professor
Name that planetHillary's Chance. It's remote, and is at about the right temperature.
91
posted on
02/01/2006 1:31:17 PM PST
by
sourcery
(Either the Constitution trumps stare decisis, or else the Constitution is a dead letter.)
 |
"To Pluto And Far Beyond" By David H. Levy, Parade, January 15, 2006 -- We don't have a dictionary definition yet that includes all the contingencies. In the wake of the new discovery, however, the International Astronomical Union has set up a group to develop a workable definition of planet. For our part, in consultation with several experienced planetary astronomers, Parade offers this definition: A planet is a body large enough that, when it formed, it condensed under its own gravity to be shaped like a sphere. It orbits a star directly and is not a moon of another planet. |
92
posted on
02/01/2006 10:32:11 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(In the long run, there is only the short run.)
To: Right Wing Professor
To: Right Wing Professor
94
posted on
02/01/2006 10:36:58 PM PST
by
doug from upland
(INDICTING HILLARY -- now that is something that's good for America)
To: neverdem
95
posted on
02/02/2006 10:14:38 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(In the long run, there is only the short run.)
http://www.gizmag.com/go/5170/
The solar system no longer has nine planets
February 8, 2006
Since 1930 when American Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, schoolchildren have been taught that Planet Earth is one of nine planets which orbit the sun, and that Pluto is the outermost planet in the solar system. Then last July 30, an American team found a more distant and quite large object circling the sun some 15 billion kilometers beyond earth. Dubbed UB313, an enormous debate has erupted over whether it should be classified as the tenth planet. More fuel was added to the debate last week when a group lead by Bonn astrophysicists determined that this putative planet is bigger than Pluto. By measuring its thermal emission, the scientists were able to determine a diameter of about 3000 km, which makes it 700 km larger than Pluto and thereby marks it as the largest solar system object found since the discovery of Neptune in 1846. For the last six months, many astronomers have argued that UB313 should be classified as a Kuiper belt object (KBO) but Pluto is also in the Kuiper belt, and the revelations about its size will weigh heavily when the special 19-member panel set up by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) determines exactly what constitutes a planet. Either way, the official planetary count will no longer be nine.
Like Pluto, 2003 UB313 is one of the icy bodies in the so-called Kuiper belt that swarms beyond Neptune. It is the most distant object ever seen in the Solar System. Its very elongated orbit takes it up to 97 times farther from the Sun than is the Earth - almost twice as far as the most distant point of Pluto's orbit – so that it takes twice as long as Pluto to go around the Sun.
When it was first seen, UB313 appeared to be at least as big as Pluto, but an accurate estimate of its size was not possible without knowing how reflective it was. A team lead by Prof. Frank Bertoldi from the University of Bonn and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) and the MPIfR's Dr. Wilhelm Altenhoff has now resolved this problem by using measurements of the amount of heat UB313 radiates to determine its size, which when combined with the optical observations also allows them to determine its reflectivity. "Since UB313 is decidedly larger than Pluto," Frank Bertoldi remarks, "it is now increasingly hard to justify calling Pluto a planet if UB313 is not also given this status."
UB313 was discovered in January 2005 by Prof. Mike Brown and his colleagues from the Californian Institute of Technology in a sky survey using a wide field digital camera that searches for distant minor planets at visible wavelengths. They discovered a slowly moving, spatially unresolved source, the apparent speed of which allowed them to determine its distance and orbital shape. However, they were not able to determine the size of the object, although from its optical brightness it was believed to be larger than Pluto.
Astronomers have found small planetary object beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto since 1992, confirming a then 40-year old prediction by astronomers Kenneth Edgeworth (1880-1972) and Gerard P. Kuiper (1905-1973) for the existence of a belt of smaller planetary objects beyond Neptune. The so-called Kuiper Belt contains objects left from the formation of our planetary system some 4.5 billion years ago. In their distant orbits they were able to survive the gravitational clean-up of similar objects by the large planets in the inner solar system. Some Kuiper Belt objects are still occasionally deflected to then enter the inner solar system and may appear as short period comets.
In optically visible light, the solar system objects are visible through the light they reflect from the Sun. Thereby the apparent brightness depends on their size as well as on the surface reflectivity. Latter is known to vary between 4% for most comets to over 50% for Pluto, which makes any accurate size determination from the optical light alone impossible.
The Bonn group therefore used the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain, equipped with the sensitive Max-Planck Millimeter Bolometer (MAMBO) detector developed and built at the MPIfR, to measure the heat radiation of UB313 at a wavelength of 1.2 mm, where reflected sunlight is negligible and the object brightness only depends on the surface temperature and the object size. The temperature can be well estimated from the distance to the sun, and thus the observed 1.2 mm brightness allows a good size measurement. One can further conclude that the UB313 surface is such that it reflects about 60% of the incident solar light, which is very similar to the reflectivity of Pluto.
"The discovery of a solar system object larger than Pluto is very exciting," Dr. Altenhoff exclaims, who has researched minor planets and comets for decades. "It tells us that Pluto, who should properly also be counted to the Kuiper Belt, is not such an unusual object. Maybe we can find even other small planets out there, which could teach us more about how the solar system formed and evolved. The Kuiper Belt objects are the debris from its formation, an archeological site containing pristine remnants of the solar nebula, from which the sun and the planets formed." Dr. Altenhoff made the pioneering discovery of heat radiation from Pluto in 1988 with a predecessor of the current detector at the IRAM 30-meter telescope.
The size measurement of 2003 UB313 is published in the 2 February 2006 issue of Nature. The research team includes Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi (Bonn University and MPIfR), Dr. Wilhelm Altenhoff (MPIfR), Dr. Axel Weiss (MPIfR), Prof. Dr. Karl M. Menten (MPIfR), and Dr. Clemens Thum (IRAM).
96
posted on
02/19/2006 10:57:31 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(It's a big planet. We're willing to share. They're not. Out they go.)
97
posted on
03/04/2006 7:00:31 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Fiction has to make sense, unless it's part of the Dhimmicrat agenda and its supporting myth.)
To: KevinDavis
an update:
The discovery of 2003 UB313, the 10th planet
by Mike Brown
April 2006
The newest size measurement comes from the Hubble Space Telescope. While for most telescopes the planet is too small to be seen as anything other than a dot of light, HST can (just barely) directly measure how big across it is. The measurement is extremely hard, however, even for HST, because even HST distorts light a little bit as it goes through the telescope, and we needed to be sure that we were measuring the actual size of the planet, rather than being fooled by distortion. So we waited until the planet was very close to a star and then snapped a series of 28 pictures and carefully went back and forth comparing the star and the planet. In the end, we determined that the planet is 2400 +/- 100 km across.
The best ever picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, as unimpressive as it is (since the planet is so so so so so far away) looks like this:
When we initially guessed how big the planet was, we thought it was likely a bit larger, because we guessed that it probably reflected the same amount of sunlight as Pluto (about 60%). But this new size measurement tells us that the planet reflects considerably more sunlight than Pluto (86 +/- 7%)!. For more on this see below on what the planet is made out of.
The new HST measurement makes it sound like the previous measurement was "wrong," but it was not! All measurements in science are subject to uncertainty, and the group from Bonn carefully stated what their uncertainty was, just as we have with the new measurement....
98
posted on
04/15/2006 6:17:53 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
99
posted on
04/15/2006 6:22:39 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
To: SunkenCiv
The best ever picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, as unimpressive as it is (since the planet is so so so so so far away) looks like this:
100
posted on
04/15/2006 6:26:20 AM PDT
by
Drango
(A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.)
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-60, 61-80, 81-100, 101-115 next last
Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson
