The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.
-
Upload
victoria-morton -
Category
Documents
-
view
222 -
download
2
Transcript of The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.
![Page 1: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Dwarf Planet Pluto& New Horizon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
Dr. Harold Williams
Montgomery College Planetarium http://Montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/planet/
![Page 2: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Clyde Tombaughdiscover of Pluto
![Page 3: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Lowell Observatory Astrograph
![Page 4: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Lowell Observatory Blink Comparator
![Page 5: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
![Page 6: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
![Page 7: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
![Page 8: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Ganymede (Jupiter), Titan (Saturn) and Callisto (Jupiter) Io (Jupiter), Luna (Earth), Europa (Jupiter), Triton (Neptune)
and Pluto.
![Page 9: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
![Page 10: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
![Page 11: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Asteroid Orbits• Most asteroids orbit
in a belt between Mars and Jupiter
• Trojan asteroids follow Jupiter’s orbit
• Orbits of near-Earth asteroids cross Earth’s orbit
![Page 12: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
![Page 13: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Wikipedia Links• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_planet • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Planet_Center • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Minor_planet_number • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_
%28dwarf_planet%29 • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
Neptunian_object • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_asteroids_named_after_important_people
![Page 14: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
![Page 15: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Kuiper belt:On orderly orbits from 30-100 AU in disk of solar system
Oort cloud:On random orbits extending to about 50,000 AU
Only a tiny number of comets enter the inner solar system - most stay far from the Sun
![Page 16: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
How big can a comet be?
![Page 17: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
Pluto’s Orbit
• Pluto will never hit Neptune, even though their orbits cross, because of 3:2 orbital resonance
• Neptune orbits three times during the time Pluto orbits twice
![Page 18: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
Is Pluto a Planet?
• By far the smallest planet.
• Not a gas giant like other outer planets.
• Has an icy composition like a comet.
• Has a very elliptical, inclined orbit.
• Pluto has more in common with comets than with the eight major planets
![Page 19: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
Other Icy Bodies• There are many icy
objects like Pluto on elliptical, inclined orbits beyond Neptune.
• The largest of these, “Planet X”, now called Eris (it has a moon called Dysnomonia), was discovered in summer 2005, is even larger than Pluto
![Page 20: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Kuiper Belt Objects• These large, icy
objects have orbits similar to the smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt that become short period comets
• So are they very large comets or very small planets?
![Page 21: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
What are the large objects of the Kuiper belt like?
![Page 22: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
HST’s view of Pluto & Charon
![Page 23: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
What is Pluto like?
• Its moon Charon is nearly as large as Pluto itself (probably made by a major impact)
• Pluto is very cold (40 K)
• Pluto has a thin nitrogen atmosphere that will refreeze onto the surface as Pluto’s orbit takes it farther from the Sun.
![Page 24: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
Other Kuiper Belt Objects
• Most have been discovered very recently so little is known about them.
• NASA’s New Horizons mission will study Pluto and a few other Kuiper Belt object in a planned flyby.
![Page 25: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
Is “Planet X” a planet?
![Page 26: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
Pluto and “Planet X”
• Pluto’s size was overestimated after its discovery in 1930
• It was considered a planet, and nothing of similar size was discovered for several decades
• Now other large objects have been discovered in Kuiper Belt, including “Planet X”
• Some scientists consider all of those objects planets; others consider none of them planets.
![Page 27: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
Sedan in Green Circlehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9037
7_Sedan
![Page 28: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
![Page 29: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/29.jpg)
What have we learned?
• How big can a comet be?– The Kuiper belt from which comets come
contains objects as large as Pluto.
• What are the large objects of the Kuiper belt like?– Large objects in the Kuiper belt have orbits
and icy compositions like those of comets.
• Is “Planet X, Eris” a planet?– It remains a matter of opinion because
scientists have not yet settled on a definition of the minimum size of a planet.
![Page 30: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
New Horizons Spacecraft
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
• Major Contractors JHU APL, SwRI
• New Horizons NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
![Page 31: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/31.jpg)
New Horizonslaunched January 19, 2006flyby Pluto July 14, 2015
![Page 32: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/32.jpg)
Spacecraft New Horizons
![Page 33: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/33.jpg)
Thermal Space Battery
![Page 34: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/34.jpg)
Antennas of New Horizons (HGA, MGA and LGA)
![Page 35: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/35.jpg)
Comet Analogue
• Dry Ice, frozen Carbon Dioxide, CO2
• Water, H2O
• Builders sand, Silicates mainly SiO2
• Charcoal, largely Carbon, C• Dark Karo Syrup, complex hydrocarbons
• Little Ammonia, NH4
• Frozen Methane, CH4, not used for safety sake (it burns and explodes in air), but it looks like CO2
![Page 36: The Dwarf Planet Pluto & New Horizon Dr. Harold Williams Montgomery College Planetarium.](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062321/56649dcf5503460f94ac423e/html5/thumbnails/36.jpg)
Time Line
• Launched January 19, 2006
• Jupiter Gravity Assist February 2007• flyby Pluto July 14, 2015