1.
Minor planet
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A minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is neither a planet nor exclusively classified as a comet. Minor planets can be dwarf planets, asteroids, trojans, centaurs, Kuiper belt objects, as of 2016, the orbits of 709,706 minor planets were archived at the Minor Planet Center,469,275 of which had received permanent numbers. The first minor planet to be discovered was Ceres in 1801, the term minor planet has been used since the 19th century to describe these objects. The term planetoid has also used, especially for larger objects such as those the International Astronomical Union has called dwarf planets since 2006. Historically, the asteroid, minor planet, and planetoid have been more or less synonymous. This terminology has become complicated by the discovery of numerous minor planets beyond the orbit of Jupiter. A Minor planet seen releasing gas may be classified as a comet. Before 2006, the IAU had officially used the term minor planet, during its 2006 meeting, the IAU reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Objects are called dwarf planets if their self-gravity is sufficient to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium, all other minor planets and comets are called small Solar System bodies. The IAU stated that the minor planet may still be used. However, for purposes of numbering and naming, the distinction between minor planet and comet is still used. Hundreds of thousands of planets have been discovered within the Solar System. The Minor Planet Center has documented over 167 million observations and 729,626 minor planets, of these,20,570 have official names. As of March 2017, the lowest-numbered unnamed minor planet is 1974 FV1, as of March 2017, the highest-numbered named minor planet is 458063 Gustavomuler. There are various broad minor-planet populations, Asteroids, traditionally, most have been bodies in the inner Solar System. Near-Earth asteroids, those whose orbits take them inside the orbit of Mars. Further subclassification of these, based on distance, is used, Apohele asteroids orbit inside of Earths perihelion distance. Aten asteroids, those that have semi-major axes of less than Earths, Apollo asteroids are those asteroids with a semimajor axis greater than Earths, while having a perihelion distance of 1.017 AU or less. Like Aten asteroids, Apollo asteroids are Earth-crossers, amor asteroids are those near-Earth asteroids that approach the orbit of Earth from beyond, but do not cross it
2.
Ceres (dwarf planet)
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Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter is approximately 945 kilometers, making it the largest of the planets within the orbit of Neptune. The 33rd-largest known body in the Solar System, it is the dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune. Composed of rock and ice, Ceres is estimated to approximately one third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Ceres is the object in the asteroid belt known to be rounded by its own gravity. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo on 1 January 1801. It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after many other objects in similar orbits were discovered. Ceres appears to be differentiated into a core and icy mantle. The surface is probably a mixture of ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres and this was unexpected, because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets. The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015, pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots inside a crater were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, on 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several. In October 2015, NASA released a true portrait of Ceres made by Dawn. In February 2017, organics were reported to have been detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater, Johann Elert Bode, in 1772, first suggested that an undiscovered planet could exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Kepler had already noticed the gap between Mars and Jupiter in 1596, the pattern predicted that the missing planet ought to have an orbit with a semi-major axis near 2.8 astronomical units. Although they did not discover Ceres, they found several large asteroids. One of the selected for the search was Giuseppe Piazzi. Before receiving his invitation to join the group, Piazzi discovered Ceres on 1 January 1801 and he was searching for the 87th of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la Caille, but found that it was preceded by another
3.
Pluto
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Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond Neptune. It was the first Kuiper belt object to be discovered, Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 and was originally considered to be the ninth planet from the Sun. After 1992, its planethood was questioned following the discovery of objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. In 2005, Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto, was discovered and this led the International Astronomical Union to define the term planet formally in 2006, during their 26th General Assembly. That definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a dwarf planet, Pluto is the largest and second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume but is less massive than Eris, like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is primarily made of ice and rock and is relatively small—about one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third its volume. It has an eccentric and inclined orbit during which it ranges from 30 to 49 astronomical units or AU from the Sun. This means that Pluto periodically comes closer to the Sun than Neptune, light from the Sun takes about 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance. Pluto has five moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body. The IAU has not formalized a definition for binary dwarf planets, on July 14,2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto. During its brief flyby, New Horizons made detailed measurements and observations of Pluto, on October 25,2016, at 05,48 pm ET, the last bit of data was received from New Horizons from its close encounter with Pluto on July 14,2015. In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier used Newtonian mechanics to predict the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to speculate that Uranuss orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune, by 1909, Lowell and William H. Pickering had suggested several possible celestial coordinates for such a planet. Lowell and his observatory conducted his search until his death in 1916, unknown to Lowell, his surveys had captured two faint images of Pluto on March 19 and April 7,1915, but they were not recognized for what they were. There are fourteen other known prediscovery observations, with the oldest made by the Yerkes Observatory on August 20,1909. Percivals widow, Constance Lowell, entered into a legal battle with the Lowell Observatory over her late husbands legacy. Tombaughs task was to image the night sky in pairs of photographs, then examine each pair
4.
Eris (dwarf planet)
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Eris is the most massive and second-largest dwarf planet known in the Solar System. It is also the known body directly orbiting the Sun. It is measured to be 2,326 ±12 kilometers in diameter, Eris is 27% more massive than dwarf planet Pluto, though Pluto is slightly larger by volume. Eris mass is about 0. 27% of the Earths mass, Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its identity was verified later that year. It is an object and a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disk. It has one moon, Dysnomia. As of February 2016, its distance from the Sun is 96.3 astronomical units, because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar Systems tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union to define the term planet for the first time. Observations of an occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was 2,326 ±12 kilometers, very slightly less than Pluto. Eris was discovered by the team of Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, the discovery was announced on July 29,2005, the same day as Makemake and two days after Haumea, due in part to events that would later lead to controversy about Haumea. Routine observations were taken by the team on October 21,2003, in January 2005, the re-analysis revealed Eriss slow motion against the background stars. Follow-up observations were carried out to make a preliminary determination of Eriss orbit. More observations released in October 2005 revealed that Eris has a moon, observations of Dysnomias orbit permitted scientists to determine the mass of Eris, which in June 2007 they calculated to be ×1022 kg, 27%±2% greater than Plutos. Eris is named after the Greek goddess Eris, a personification of strife, the regular adjectival form of Eris is Eridian. As a result, for a time the object known to the wider public as Xena. Xena was a name used internally by the discovery team. It was inspired by the character of the television series Xena. The discovery team had saved the nickname Xena for the first body they discovered that was larger than Pluto
5.
Makemake
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Makemake is a dwarf planet and perhaps the largest Kuiper belt object in the classical population, with a diameter approximately two thirds that of Pluto. Makemake has one satellite, S/20151. Makemake’s extremely low temperature, about 30 K, means its surface is covered with methane, ethane. Makemake was discovered on March 31,2005, by a led by Michael E. Brown. Initially, it was known as 2005 FY9 and later given the minor-planet number 136472, Makemake was recognized as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union in July 2008. Its name derives from Makemake in the mythology of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. Makemake was discovered on March 31,2005, by a team at the Palomar Observatory, led by Michael E. Brown, despite its relative brightness, Makemake was not discovered until well after many much fainter Kuiper belt objects. Most searches for minor planets are conducted relatively close to the ecliptic, besides Pluto, Makemake is the only other dwarf planet that was bright enough that Clyde Tombaugh could have detected it during his search for trans-Neptunian planets around 1930. At the time of Tombaughs survey, Makemake was only a few degrees from the ecliptic, near the border of Taurus and Auriga, at an apparent magnitude of 16.0. This position, however, was very near the Milky Way. Tombaugh continued searching for years after the discovery of Pluto. The provisional designation 2005 FY9 was given to Makemake when the discovery was made public, before that, the discovery team used the codename Easterbunny for the object, because of its discovery shortly after Easter. In July 2008, in accordance with IAU rules for classical Kuiper belt objects,2005 FY9 was given the name of a creator deity. The name of Makemake, the creator of humanity and god of fertility in the myths of the Rapa Nui, as of December 2015, Makemake is 52.4 AU from the Sun, almost as far from the Sun as it ever reaches on its orbit. Makemake follows a very similar to that of Haumea, highly inclined at 29°. Nevertheless, Makemakes orbit is farther from the Sun in terms of both the semi-major axis and perihelion. Its orbital period is nearly 310 years, more than Plutos 248 years, both Makemake and Haumea are currently far from the ecliptic—the angular distance is almost 29°. Makemake is approaching its 2033 aphelion, whereas Haumea passed its aphelion in early 1992, Makemake is a classical Kuiper belt object, which means its orbit lies far enough from Neptune to remain stable over the age of the Solar System
6.
Haumea
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Haumea, minor-planet designation 136108 Haumea, is a dwarf planet located beyond Neptunes orbit. On September 17,2008, it was recognized as a planet by the International Astronomical Union and named after Haumea. Haumeas mass is about one-third that of Pluto, and 1/1400 that of Earth, although its shape has not been directly observed, calculations from its light curve indicate that it is a triaxial ellipsoid, with its major axis twice as long as its minor. Its gravity is thought to be sufficient for it to have relaxed into hydrostatic equilibrium, two teams claim credit for the discovery of Haumea. Mike Brown and his team at Caltech discovered Haumea in December 2004 on images they had taken on May 6,2004, on July 20,2005, they published an online abstract of a report intended to announce the discovery at a conference in September 2005. At around this time, José Luis Ortiz Moreno and his team at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía at Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain found Haumea on images taken on March 7–10,2003. Ortiz emailed the Minor Planet Center with their discovery on the night of July 27,2005, Ortiz later admitted he had accessed the Caltech observation logs but denied any wrongdoing, stating he was merely verifying whether they had discovered a new object. However, the IAU announcement on September 17,2008, that Haumea had been accepted as a dwarf planet, did not mention a discoverer. Until it was given a permanent name, the Caltech discovery team used the nickname Santa among themselves, because they had discovered Haumea on December 28,2004, the Spanish team were the first to file a claim for discovery to the Minor Planet Center, in July 2005. On July 29,2005, Haumea was given the provisional designation 2003 EL61, on September 7,2006, it was numbered and admitted into the official minor planet catalogue as 2003 EL61. The names were proposed by David Rabinowitz of the Caltech team, Haumea is the matron goddess of the island of Hawaiʻi, where the Mauna Kea Observatory is located. The two known moons, also believed to have formed in this manner, are named after two of Haumeas daughters, Hiʻiaka and Nāmaka. The proposal by the Ortiz team, Ataecina, did not meet IAU naming requirements, Haumea is a plutoid, a dwarf planet beyond Neptunes orbit. Haumea appears to have an ellipsoid shape resulting its rapid rotation complicated by tidal interactions with its moons. This contrasts with the simpler oblate shape typically assumed by less rapidly rotating astronomical bodies such as the Earth, in other words, Haumea is spinning so fast that if it spun much faster these bulges would distort into a dumbbell shape and split the planet in two. Haumea was initially listed as a classical Kuiper belt object in 2006 by the Minor Planet Center, the nominal trajectory suggests that it is in the weak 7,12 resonance with Neptune, because its perihelion distance of 35 AU is near the limit of stability with Neptune. There are precovery images of Haumea dating back to March 22,1955 from the Palomar Mountain Digitized Sky Survey, further observations of the orbit will be required to verify its dynamic status. Haumea has a period of 284 Earth years, a perihelion of 35 AU
7.
Dawn (spacecraft)
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Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It is currently in orbit about its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres, Dawn entered Vesta orbit on July 16,2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. Dawn entered Ceres orbit on March 6,2015, and is predicted to remain in orbit perpetually after the conclusion of its mission, NASA considered, but decided against, a proposal to visit a third target. The Dawn mission is managed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with components contributed by European partners from the Netherlands, Italy. It is the first NASA exploratory mission to use ion propulsion, previous multi-target missions using conventional drives, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys. The first working ion thruster was built by Harold R. Kaufman in 1959 at NASAs Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the thruster was similar to the general design of a gridded electrostatic ion thruster with mercury as its propellant. Suborbital tests of the engine followed during the 1960s, and in 1964 the engine was tested on a flight aboard the Space Electric Rocket Test 1. It successfully operated for the planned 31 minutes before falling back to Earth and this test was followed by an orbital test, SERT-2, in 1970. In addition to the ion thruster, among the other technologies validated by the DS1 was the Small Deep Space Transponder,26 proposals were submitted to the Discovery Program solicitation, with budget initially targeted at 300 million USD. Three semi-finalists were downselected in January 2001 for a design study, Dawn, Kepler. In December 2001 NASA selected the Kepler and the Dawn mission for the Discovery program, both missions were initially selected for a launch in 2006. The status of the Dawn mission changed several times, the project was cancelled in December 2003, and then reinstated in February 2004. On March 2,2006, Dawn was again cancelled by NASA, the spacecrafts manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corporation, appealed NASAs decision, offering to build the spacecraft at cost, forgoing any profit in order to gain experience in a new market field. NASA then put the cancellation under review, and on March 27,2006, in the last week of September 2006, the Dawn missions instrument payload integration reached full functionality. Although originally projected to cost US$373 million, cost overruns inflated the final cost of the mission to US$446 million in 2007, christopher T. Russell was chosen to lead the Dawn mission team. Ceres and Vesta were chosen as two contrasting protoplanets, the first one apparently wet and the dry, whose accretion was terminated by the formation of Jupiter. The two bodies provide a bridge in scientific understanding between the formation of planets and the icy bodies of the Solar System, and under what conditions a rocky planet can hold water. Dawn is the first mission to study a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres a few months before the arrival of the New Horizons probe at Pluto in July 2015, Ceres comprises a third of the total mass of the asteroid belt
8.
Asteroid belt
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The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets, the asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, the total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon, or 22% that of Pluto, and roughly twice that of Plutos moon Charon. Ceres, the belts only dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle, the asteroid material is so thinly distributed that numerous unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form a family whose members have similar orbital characteristics. Individual asteroids within the belt are categorized by their spectra. The asteroid belt formed from the solar nebula as a group of planetesimals. Planetesimals are the precursors of the protoplanets. Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter imbued the protoplanets with too much energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of fusing together, the planetesimals, as a result,99. 9% of the asteroid belts original mass was lost in the first 100 million years of the Solar Systems history. Some fragments eventually found their way into the inner Solar System, Asteroid orbits continue to be appreciably perturbed whenever their period of revolution about the Sun forms an orbital resonance with Jupiter. At these orbital distances, a Kirkwood gap occurs as they are swept into other orbits. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the objects, the centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids. On 22 January 2014, ESA scientists reported the detection, for the first definitive time, of water vapor on Ceres, the detection was made by using the far-infrared abilities of the Herschel Space Observatory. The finding was unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are considered to sprout jets. According to one of the scientists, The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids. This pattern, now known as the Titius–Bode law, predicted the semi-major axes of the six planets of the provided one allowed for a gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
9.
New Horizons
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New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASAs New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute, on January 19,2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 kilometers per second. After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28,2007, most of the post-Jupiter voyage was spent in hibernation mode to preserve on-board systems, except for brief annual checkouts. On December 6,2014, New Horizons was brought online for the Pluto encounter. On January 15,2015, the New Horizons spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto, on July 14,2015, at 11,49 UTC, it flew 12,500 km above the surface of Pluto, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet. On October 25,2016, at 21,48 UTC, the last of the recorded data from the Pluto flyby was received from New Horizons. Having completed its flyby of Pluto, New Horizons has maneuvered for a flyby of Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69, expected to place on January 1,2019. Appointed as the principal investigator, Stern was described by Krimigis as the personification of the Pluto mission. New Horizons was based largely on Sterns work since Pluto 350, the New Horizons proposal was one of five that were officially submitted to NASA. It was later selected as one of two finalists to be subject to a concept study, in June 2001. In November 2001, New Horizons was officially selected for funding as part of the New Frontiers program. However, the new NASA Administrator appointed by the Bush Administration, Sean OKeefe, was not supportive of New Horizons, after an intense campaign to gain support for New Horizons, the Planetary Science Decadal Survey of 2003-2013 was published in the summer of 2002. New Horizons topped the list of projects considered the highest priority among the community in the medium-size category, ahead of missions to the Moon. Weiler stated that it was a result that administration was not going to fight, Alice Bowman became Mission Operations Manager. New Horizons is the first mission in NASAs New Frontiers mission category, larger and more expensive than the Discovery missions, the cost of the mission is approximately $700 million over 15 years. The spacecraft was built primarily by Southwest Research Institute and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the missions principal investigator is Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute. After separation from the vehicle, overall control was taken by Mission Operations Center at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County. The science instruments are operated at Clyde Tombaugh Science Operations Center in Boulder, New Horizons was originally planned as a voyage to the only unexplored planet in the Solar System
10.
Dysnomia (moon)
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Dysnomia —officially Eris I Dysnomia—is the only known moon of the dwarf planet Eris. Observations taken on 10 September revealed a moon in orbit around Eris, in keeping with the Xena nickname that was already in use for Eris, the moon was nicknamed Gabrielle by its discoverers, after Xenas sidekick. It is 60 times fainter than Eris in the K band and 480 times fainter in the V band, which means a very different, and quite redder, spectrum, indicating a significantly darker surface. Assuming its albedo is five times lower than Eriss, its diameter would be 685±50 km, of the Solar Systems dwarf planet and minor planet moons, only Charon is definitely larger than Dysnomia. Combining Keck and Hubble observations, the satellite was used to determine the mass of Eris and its orbital period is calculated to be 15. 774±0.002 d. These observations indicate that Dysnomia has an orbit around Eris. This shows that the mass of Eris is 1.27 times that of Pluto, astronomers now know that the four brightest Kuiper belt objects have satellites. Among the fainter members of the only about 10% are known to have satellites. This is thought to imply that collisions between large KBOs have been frequent in the past, impacts between bodies of the order of 1000 km across would throw off large amounts of material that would coalesce into a moon. A similar mechanism is thought to have led to the formation of the Moon when Earth was struck by a giant impactor early in the history of the Solar System. Mike Brown, the discoverer, chose the name Dysnomia due to a number of associations it had for him. Dysnomia, the daughter of Eris, fits the general historically established pattern of naming moons after lesser gods associated with the primary god, also, the English translation of Dysnomia, lawlessness, echoes Lucy Lawless, the actress famous for starring in Xena, Warrior Princess on television. Before receiving their names, Eris and Dysnomia were nicknamed Xena and Gabrielle. James Christy, who discovered Charon, followed the principle established with Pluto by choosing a name which shared its first four letters with his wifes name, Charlene. Dysnomia, similarly, has the same first letter as Browns wife, Diane, and Brown uses the nickname Dy /ˈdaɪ/ for the moon, because of this, Brown pronounces the full name /daɪsˈnoʊmiə/, with a long y. Media related to Dysnomia at Wikimedia Commons
11.
Hubble Space Telescope
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The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, with a 2. 4-meter mirror, Hubbles four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. Hubbles orbit outside the distortion of Earths atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images, Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute selects Hubbles targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center controls the spacecraft. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923, Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, Hubbles main mirror was found to have been ground incorrectly, the optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993. Hubble is the telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. After launch by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, five subsequent Space Shuttle missions repaired, upgraded, the fifth mission was canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster. However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, the telescope is operating as of 2017, and could last until 2030–2040. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018, the history of the Hubble Space Telescope can be traced back as far as 1946, to the astronomer Lyman Spitzers paper Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory. In it, he discussed the two advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. First, the resolution would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere. Second, a telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light. Spitzer devoted much of his career to pushing for the development of a space telescope, space-based astronomy had begun on a very small scale following World War II, as scientists made use of developments that had taken place in rocket technology. An orbiting solar telescope was launched in 1962 by the United Kingdom as part of the Ariel space program, oAO-1s battery failed after three days, terminating the mission. It was followed by OAO-2, which carried out observations of stars and galaxies from its launch in 1968 until 1972. The continuing success of the OAO program encouraged increasingly strong consensus within the community that the LST should be a major goal
12.
Planet
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The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye and these were regarded by many early cultures as divine, or as emissaries of deities. As scientific knowledge advanced, human perception of the planets changed, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union officially adopted a resolution defining planets within the Solar System. This definition is controversial because it excludes many objects of mass based on where or what they orbit. The planets were thought by Ptolemy to orbit Earth in deferent, at about the same time, by careful analysis of pre-telescopic observation data collected by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler found the planets orbits were not circular but elliptical. As observational tools improved, astronomers saw that, like Earth, the planets rotated around tilted axes, and some shared such features as ice caps and seasons. Since the dawn of the Space Age, close observation by space probes has found that Earth and the planets share characteristics such as volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics. Planets are generally divided into two types, large low-density giant planets, and smaller rocky terrestrials. Under IAU definitions, there are eight planets in the Solar System, in order of increasing distance from the Sun, they are the four terrestrials, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, then the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the planets are orbited by one or more natural satellites, several thousands of planets around other stars have been discovered in the Milky Way. e. in the habitable zone. On December 20,2011, the Kepler Space Telescope team reported the discovery of the first Earth-sized extrasolar planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, orbiting a Sun-like star, Kepler-20. A2012 study, analyzing gravitational microlensing data, estimates an average of at least 1.6 bound planets for every star in the Milky Way, around one in five Sun-like stars is thought to have an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone. The idea of planets has evolved over its history, from the lights of antiquity to the earthly objects of the scientific age. The concept has expanded to include not only in the Solar System. The ambiguities inherent in defining planets have led to much scientific controversy, the five classical planets, being visible to the naked eye, have been known since ancient times and have had a significant impact on mythology, religious cosmology, and ancient astronomy. In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky, as opposed to the fixed stars, ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες or simply πλανῆται, from which todays word planet was derived. In ancient Greece, China, Babylon, and indeed all pre-modern civilizations, it was almost universally believed that Earth was the center of the Universe and that all the planets circled Earth. The first civilization known to have a theory of the planets were the Babylonians
13.
Natural satellite
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A natural satellite or moon is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet or minor planet. In the Solar System there are six planetary satellite systems containing 178 known natural satellites, four IAU-listed dwarf planets are also known to have natural satellites, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. As of January 2012, over 200 minor-planet moons have been discovered, the Earth–Moon system is unique in that the ratio of the mass of the Moon to the mass of Earth is much greater than that of any other natural-satellite–planet ratio in the Solar System. At 3,474 km across, Earths Moon is 0.27 times the diameter of Earth, the first known natural satellite was the Moon, but it was considered a planet until Copernicus introduction of heliocentrism in 1543. Until the discovery of the Galilean satellites in 1610, however, galileo chose to refer to his discoveries as Planetæ, but later discoverers chose other terms to distinguish them from the objects they orbited. The first to use of the satellite to describe orbiting bodies was the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor Iouis satellitibus erronibus in 1610. He derived the term from the Latin word satelles, meaning guard, attendant, or companion, the term satellite thus became the normal one for referring to an object orbiting a planet, as it avoided the ambiguity of moon. In 1957, however, the launching of the artificial object Sputnik created a need for new terminology, to further avoid ambiguity, the convention is to capitalize the word Moon when referring to Earths natural satellite, but not when referring to other natural satellites. A few recent authors define moon as a satellite of a planet or minor planet, there is no established lower limit on what is considered a moon. Small asteroid moons, such as Dactyl, have also been called moonlets, the upper limit is also vague. Two orbiting bodies are described as a double body rather than primary. Asteroids such as 90 Antiope are considered double asteroids, but they have not forced a clear definition of what constitutes a moon, some authors consider the Pluto–Charon system to be a double planet. In contrast, irregular satellites are thought to be captured asteroids possibly further fragmented by collisions, most of the major natural satellites of the Solar System have regular orbits, while most of the small natural satellites have irregular orbits. The Moon and possibly Charon are exceptions among large bodies in that they are thought to have originated by the collision of two large proto-planetary objects. The material that would have placed in orbit around the central body is predicted to have reaccreted to form one or more orbiting natural satellites. As opposed to planetary-sized bodies, asteroid moons are thought to form by this process. Triton is another exception, although large and in a close, circular orbit, its motion is retrograde, most regular moons in the Solar System are tidally locked to their respective primaries, meaning that the same side of the natural satellite always faces its planet. The only known exception is Saturns natural satellite Hyperion, which rotates chaotically because of the influence of Titan
14.
Hydrostatic equilibrium
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In fluid mechanics, a fluid is said to be in hydrostatic equilibrium or hydrostatic balance when it is at rest, or when the flow velocity at each point is constant over time. This occurs when external forces such as gravity are balanced by a pressure gradient force, hydrostatic equilibrium is the current distinguishing criterion between dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies, and has other roles in astrophysics and planetary geology. This qualification typically means that the object is symmetrically rounded into a spheroid or ellipsoid shape, there are 31 observationally confirmed such objects, sometimes called planemos, in the Solar System, seven more that are virtually certain, and a hundred or so more that are likely. Newtons laws of state that a volume of a fluid that is not in motion or that is in a state of constant velocity must have zero net force on it. This means the sum of the forces in a given direction must be opposed by a sum of forces in the opposite direction. This force balance is called a hydrostatic equilibrium, the fluid can be split into a large number of cuboid volume elements, by considering a single element, the action of the fluid can be derived. If the density is ρ, the volume is V and g the standard gravity, then, the volume of this cuboid is equal to the area of the top or bottom, times the height — the formula for finding the volume of a cube. This sum equals zero if the velocity is constant. Dividing by A,0 = P b o t t o m − P t o p − ρ ⋅ g ⋅ h, or, P t o p − P b o t t o m = − ρ ⋅ g ⋅ h. Ptop − Pbottom is a change in pressure, and h is the height of the volume change in the distance above the ground. By saying these changes are small, the equation can be written in differential form. Density changes with pressure, and gravity changes with height, so the equation would be, d P = − ρ ⋅ g ⋅ d h. Note finally that this last equation can be derived by solving the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations for the situation where u = v = ∂ p ∂ x = ∂ p ∂ y =0. Then the only equation is the z -equation, which now reads ∂ p ∂ z + ρ g =0. Thus, hydrostatic balance can be regarded as a simple equilibrium solution of the Navier–Stokes equations. M is a foliation of spheres weighted by the mass density ρ, the hydrostatic equilibrium pertains to hydrostatics and the principles of equilibrium of fluids. A hydrostatic balance is a balance for weighing substances in water. Hydrostatic balance allows the discovery of their specific gravities, in any given layer of a star, there is a hydrostatic equilibrium between the outward thermal pressure from below and the weight of the material above pressing inward
15.
Spheroid
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A spheroid, or ellipsoid of revolution, is a quadric surface obtained by rotating an ellipse about one of its principal axes, in other words, an ellipsoid with two equal semi-diameters. If the ellipse is rotated about its axis, the result is a prolate spheroid. If the ellipse is rotated about its axis, the result is an oblate spheroid. If the generating ellipse is a circle, the result is a sphere, because of the combined effects of gravity and rotation, the Earths shape is not quite a sphere but instead is slightly flattened in the direction of its axis of rotation. For that reason, in cartography the Earth is often approximated by an oblate spheroid instead of a sphere, the current World Geodetic System model uses a spheroid whose radius is 6,378.137 km at the equator and 6,356.752 km at the poles. The semi-major axis a is the radius of the spheroid. There are two cases, c < a, oblate spheroid c > a, prolate spheroid The case of a = c reduces to a sphere. An oblate spheroid with c < a has surface area S o b l a t e =2 π a 2 where e 2 =1 − c 2 a 2. The oblate spheroid is generated by rotation about the z-axis of an ellipse with semi-major axis a and semi-minor axis c, therefore e may be identified as the eccentricity. A prolate spheroid with c > a has surface area S p r o l a t e =2 π a 2 where e 2 =1 − a 2 c 2. The prolate spheroid is generated by rotation about the z-axis of an ellipse with semi-major axis c and semi-minor axis a and these formulas are identical in the sense that the formula for Soblate can be used to calculate the surface area of a prolate spheroid and vice versa. However, e then becomes imaginary and can no longer directly be identified with the eccentricity, both of these results may be cast into many other forms using standard mathematical identities and relations between parameters of the ellipse. The volume inside a spheroid is 4π/3a2c ≈4. 19a2c, if A = 2a is the equatorial diameter, and C = 2c is the polar diameter, the volume is π/6A2C ≈0. 523A2C. Both of these curvatures are always positive, so every point on a spheroid is elliptic. These are just two of different parameters used to define an ellipse and its solid body counterparts. The most common shapes for the density distribution of protons and neutrons in an atomic nucleus are spherical, prolate and oblate spheroidal, deformed nuclear shapes occur as a result of the competition between electromagnetic repulsion between protons, surface tension and quantum shell effects. An extreme example of a planet in science fiction is Mesklin, in Hal Clements novel Mission of Gravity. The prolate spheroid is the shape of the ball in several sports, several moons of the Solar system approximate prolate spheroids in shape, though they are actually triaxial ellipsoids
16.
Clearing the neighbourhood
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Clearing the neighbourhood around its orbit is a criterion for a celestial body to be considered a planet in the Solar System. This was one of the three criteria adopted by the International Astronomical Union in its 2006 definition of planet, in 2015, a proposal was made to use the criterion in extending the definition to exoplanets. A large body that meets the criteria for a planet but has not cleared its neighbourhood is classified as a dwarf planet. This includes Pluto, which is constrained in its orbit by the gravity of Neptune, the phrase may be derived from a paper presented to the general assembly of the IAU in 2000 by Alan Stern and Harold F. Levison. Steven Soter prefers to use the term dynamical dominance and Jean-Luc Margot notes that such language seems less prone to misinterpretation, the naming process for Eris stalled after the announcement of its discovery in 2005, pending clarification of this first step. The phrase refers to an orbiting body sweeping out its orbital region over time, as a consequence it does not then share its orbital region with other bodies of significant size, except for its own satellites, or other bodies governed by its own gravitational influence. In their paper, Stern and Levison sought an algorithm to determine which planetary bodies control the region surrounding them. They defined Λ, a measure of an ability to scatter smaller masses out of its orbital region over a period of time equal to the age of the Universe. In the domain of the solar disc, there is little variation in the average values of k for small bodies at a particular distance from the Sun. If Λ >1, then the body will likely clear out the bodies in its orbital zone. The überplanets are the eight most massive solar orbiters, and the unterplanets are the rest, steven Soter proposed an observationally based measure µ, which he called the planetary discriminant, to separate bodies orbiting stars into planets and non-planets. Per Soter, two bodies are defined to share an orbital zone if their orbits cross a common radial distance from the primary, µ is then calculated by dividing the mass of the candidate body by the total mass of the other objects that share its orbital zone. It is a measure of the degree of cleanliness of the orbital zone. Soter proposed that if µ >100, then the body be regarded as a planet. Astronomer Jean-Luc Margot has proposed a discriminant, Π, that can categorise a body based only on its own mass, its semi-major axis, and its stars mass. Like Stern–Levisons Λ, Π is a measure of the ability of the body to clear its orbit, Π is based on properties that are feasibly determinable even for exoplanetary bodies, unlike Soters µ, which requires an accurate census of the orbital zone. Π depends on the extent of clearing desired and the required to do so. Margot selected an extent of 23 times the Hill radius, then, in the mentioned units and a main-sequence lifetime of 10 billion years, k =807
17.
IAU definition of planet
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A non-satellite body fulfilling only the first two of these criteria is classified as a dwarf planet. According to the IAU, planets and dwarf planets are two classes of objects. A non-satellite body fulfilling only the first criterion is termed a small Solar System body, an alternate proposal included dwarf planets as a subcategory of planets, but IAU members voted against this proposal. The definition was a one, and has drawn both support and criticism from different astronomers, but has remained in use. According to this definition, there are eight planets in the Solar System. The definition distinguishes planets from smaller bodies and is not useful outside the Solar System, extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, are covered separately under a complementary 2003 draft guideline for the definition of planets, which distinguishes them from dwarf stars, which are larger. Before the discoveries of the early 21st century, astronomers had no real need for a definition for planets. With the discovery of Pluto in 1930, astronomers considered the Solar System to have nine planets, along with thousands of bodies such as asteroids. Pluto was thought to be larger than Mercury, in 1978, the discovery of Plutos moon Charon radically changed this picture. By measuring Charons orbital period, astronomers could accurately calculate Plutos mass for the first time, in the 1990s, astronomers began finding other objects at least as far away as Pluto, now known as Kuiper Belt objects, or KBOs. Many of these some of Plutos key orbital characteristics and are now called plutinos. Pluto came to be seen as the largest member of a new class of objects, Plutos eccentric and inclined orbit, while very unusual for a planet in the Solar System, fits in well with the other KBOs. New York Citys newly renovated Hayden Planetarium did not include Pluto in its exhibit of the planets when it reopened as the Rose Center for Earth, astronomers also knew that more objects as large as Pluto would be discovered, and the number of planets would start growing quickly. They were also concerned about the classification of planets in other planetary systems, in 2006, the matter came to a head with the first measurement of the size of 2003 UB313. That measurement had showed Eris to appear to be larger than Pluto. The process of new discoveries spurring a contentious refinement of Plutos categorization echoed a debate in the 19th century that began with the discovery of Ceres on January 1,1801, astronomers immediately declared the tiny object to be the missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. Within four years, however, the discovery of two objects with comparable sizes and orbits had cast doubt on this new thinking. By 1851, the number of planets had grown to 23, astronomers began cataloguing them separately and began calling them asteroids instead of planets
18.
Trans-Neptunian object
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A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune,30 astronomical units. Twelve minor planets with a semi-major axis greater than 150 AU and perihelion greater than 30 AU are known, the first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930. It took until 1992 to discover a second trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun directly,1992 QB1, as of February 2017 over 2,300 trans-Neptunian objects appear on the Minor Planet Centers List of Transneptunian Objects. Of these TNOs,2,000 have a perihelion farther out than Neptune, as of November 2016,242 of these have their orbits well-enough determined that they have been given a permanent minor planet designation. The largest known object is Pluto, followed by Eris,2007 OR10, Makemake. The Kuiper belt, scattered disk, and Oort cloud are three divisions of this volume of space, though treatments vary and a few objects such as Sedna do not fit easily into any division. The orbit of each of the planets is slightly affected by the influences of the other planets. Discrepancies in the early 1900s between the observed and expected orbits of Uranus and Neptune suggested that there were one or more additional planets beyond Neptune, the search for these led to the discovery of Pluto in February 1930, which was too small to explain the discrepancies. Revised estimates of Neptunes mass from the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989 showed that the problem was spurious, Pluto was easiest to find because it has the highest apparent magnitude of all known trans-Neptunian objects. It also has an inclination to the ecliptic than most other large TNOs. After Plutos discovery, American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh continued searching for years for similar objects. For a long time, no one searched for other TNOs as it was believed that Pluto. Only after the 1992 discovery of a second TNO,1992 QB1, a broad strip of the sky around the ecliptic was photographed and digitally evaluated for slowly moving objects. Hundreds of TNOs were found, with diameters in the range of 50 to 2,500 kilometers, Pluto and Eris were eventually classified as dwarf planets by the International Astronomical Union. Kuiper belt objects are classified into the following two groups, Resonant objects are locked in an orbital resonance with Neptune. Objects with a 1,2 resonance are called twotinos, and objects with a 2,3 resonance are called plutinos, after their most prominent member, classical Kuiper belt objects have no such resonance, moving on almost circular orbits, unperturbed by Neptune. Examples are 1992 QB1,50000 Quaoar and Makemake, the scattered disc contains objects farther from the Sun, usually with very irregular orbits. A typical example is the most massive known TNO, Eris, scattered-extended —Scattered-extended objects have a Tisserand parameter greater than 3 and have a time-averaged eccentricity greater than 0
19.
Michael E. Brown
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Michael E. Brown is an American astronomer, who has been professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology since 2003. His team has discovered many objects, notably the dwarf planet Eris. He is the author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming and he earned his A. B. in physics from Princeton University in 1987, where he was a member of the Princeton Tower Club. He did his studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned an M. A. degree in astronomy in 1990. Brown is well known in the community for his surveys for distant objects orbiting the Sun. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects, Browns team famously named Eris and its moon Dysnomia with the informal names Xena and Gabrielle, respectively, after the two main characters of Xena, Warrior Princess. Brown originally indicated his support for Ortizs team being given credit for the discovery of Haumea, however, the Minor Planet Center only needs precise enough orbit determination on the object in order to provide discovery credit, which Ortiz provided. The then director of the IAA, José Carlos del Toro, distanced himself from Ortiz, Brown petitioned the International Astronomical Union to credit his team rather than Ortiz as the discoverers of Haumea. The IAU has deliberately not acknowledged a discoverer of Haumea, the discovery date and location are listed as March 7,2003 at Ortizs Sierra Nevada Observatory. However, the IAU accepted Browns suggested name of Haumea, which fit the names of Haumeas two moons, rather than Ortizs Ataecina. In January 2016, Brown and fellow Caltech astronomer, Konstantin Batygin, proposed the existence of Planet Nine, the two astronomers gave a recorded interview in which they described their method and reasoning for proposing Planet 9 on January 20,2016. In 2010 Brown published a memoir of his discoveries and surrounding family life, How I Killed Pluto, Brown was named one of Times 100 most influential people of 2006. In 2007 he received Caltechs annual Feynman Prize, Caltechs most prestigious teaching honor, asteroid 11714 Mikebrown, discovered on 28 April 1998, was named in his honor. In 2012, Brown was awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, Brown married Diane Binney on March 1,2003. They have one daughter, Lilah Binney Brown and he is likes being known as the Pluto Killer so uses the Twitter handle plutokiller. Konstantin Batygin Planet Nine Notes References Wilkinson, Alex
20.
Alan Stern
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Sol Alan Stern is an American engineer and planetary scientist. He is the investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern has been involved in 24 suborbital, orbital, and planetary space missions, one of his projects was the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System, an instrument which flew on two space shuttle missions, STS-85 in 1997 and STS-93 in 1999. Stern was Executive Director of the Southwest Research Institutes Space Science and he resigned from that position after nearly a year. In early 2009 Sterns name was mentioned as a contender for the position of NASA administrator under President Obamas administration. Stern has stated, however, that he is not interested in the position at this given his desire to spend time with his family. Stern was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Joel, marks School of Texas in 1975. He then attended the University of Texas, Austin, where he received his bachelors degrees in physics & astronomy and his masters degrees in aerospace engineering and he earned a doctorate in astrophysics and planetary science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his doctorate in 1989, from 1991 to 1994 he was the leader of Southwest Research Institutes Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences group and was Chair of NASAs Outer Planets Science Working Group. In 1995 he was selected to be a Space Shuttle mission specialist finalist and in 1996 he was a candidate Space Shuttle payload specialist but did not have the opportunity to fly on the Space Shuttle. He has also worked on spacecraft rendezvous theory, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, galactic astrophysics, in 2007, Stern was listed among Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People in The World. On August 27,2008 Stern was elected to the Board of Directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, on October 7,2016, Stern was inducted into the Colorado Space Hall of Fame. It was amazing to get to be a part of some first-time exploration like that, within a matter of months, a small group of us had formed a team, an advocacy group, Why dont we get a mission together for Pluto. In December 2008, Stern joined Blue Origin, a company that was founded by Amazon. coms Jeff Bezos as an independent representative for research, the company is located in Kent, Washington and has flight tested some hardware. Stern has extensive experience in instrument development, with a concentration in ultraviolet technologies. Stern is an investigator in NASAs UV sounding rocket program. Stern is also the PI of the ALI CE UV Spectrometer for the ESA/NASA Rosetta comet orbiter and he is the PI of the SWUIS ultraviolet imager, which has flown two Shuttle missions, and the SWUIS-A airborne astronomical facility. In this capacity, Stern has flown numerous WB-57 and F-18 airborne research astronomy missions, Stern and his colleague, Dr. Daniel Durda, have been flying on the modified F/A-18 Hornet with a sophisticated camera system called the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System
21.
International Astronomical Union
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The International Astronomical Union is an international association of professional astronomers, at the PhD level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy. Among other activities, it acts as the recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies. The IAU is a member of the International Council for Science and its main objective is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The IAU maintains friendly relations with organizations that include amateur astronomers in their membership, the IAU has its head office on the second floor of the Institut dAstrophysique de Paris in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. The IAU is also responsible for the system of astronomical telegrams which are produced and distributed on its behalf by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the Minor Planet Center also operates under the IAU, and is a clearinghouse for all non-planetary or non-moon bodies in the Solar System. The Working Group for Meteor Shower Nomenclature and the Meteor Data Center coordinate the nomenclature of meteor showers, the IAU was founded on July 28,1919, at the Constitutive Assembly of the International Research Council held in Brussels, Belgium. The 7 initial member states were Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, the first executive committee consisted of Benjamin Baillaud, Alfred Fowler, and four vice presidents, William Campbell, Frank Dyson, Georges Lecointe, and Annibale Riccò. Thirty-two Commissions were appointed at the Brussels meeting and focused on topics ranging from relativity to minor planets, the reports of these 32 Commissions formed the main substance of the first General Assembly, which took place in Rome, Italy, May 2–10,1922. By the end of the first General Assembly, ten nations had joined the Union. Although the Union was officially formed eight months after the end of World War I, the first 50 years of the Unions history are well documented. Subsequent history is recorded in the form of reminiscences of past IAU Presidents, twelve of the fourteen past General Secretaries in the period 1964-2006 contributed their recollections of the Unions history in IAU Information Bulletin No.100. Six past IAU Presidents in the period 1976–2003 also contributed their recollections in IAU Information Bulletin No.104, the IAU includes a total of 12,664 individual members who are professional astronomers from 96 countries worldwide. 83% of all members are male, while 17% are female, among them the unions current president. Membership also includes 79 national members, professional astronomical communities representing their countrys affiliation with the IAU, the sovereign body of the IAU is its General Assembly, which comprises all members. The Assembly determines IAU policy, approves the Statutes and By-Laws of the Union, the right to vote on matters brought before the Assembly varies according to the type of business under discussion. On budget matters, votes are weighted according to the subscription levels of the national members. A second category vote requires a turnout of at least two-thirds of national members in order to be valid, an absolute majority is sufficient for approval in any vote, except for Statute revision which requires a two-thirds majority. An equality of votes is resolved by the vote of the President of the Union, since 1922, the IAU General Assembly meets every three years, with the exception of the period between 1938 and 1948, due to World War II
22.
Solar System
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The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets, of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the mass is in the Sun. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being composed of rock. The four outer planets are giant planets, being more massive than the terrestrials. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects, the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptunes orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets, identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, the heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium, it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, the Solar System is located in the Orion Arm,26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System, the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons. The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99. 86% of the known mass. The Suns four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the mass, with Jupiter. The remaining objects of the Solar System together comprise less than 0. 002% of the Solar Systems total mass, most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earths orbit, known as the ecliptic
23.
Kuiper belt
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It is similar to the asteroid belt, but it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, although many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia and water. The Kuiper belt is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets, Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake, some of the Solar Systems moons, such as Neptunes Triton and Saturns Phoebe, are also thought to have originated in the region. The Kuiper belt was named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not actually predict its existence, in 1992,1992 QB1 was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object since Pluto. Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to over a thousand, the Kuiper belt should not be confused with the theorized Oort cloud, which is a thousand times more distant and is mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc, Pluto is the largest and most-massive member of the Kuiper belt and the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Originally considered a planet, Plutos status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a planet in 2006. It is compositionally similar to other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as plutinos. After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, many speculated that it not be alone. The region now called the Kuiper belt was hypothesized in various forms for decades and it was only in 1992 that the first direct evidence for its existence was found. The number and variety of speculations on the nature of the Kuiper belt have led to continued uncertainty as to who deserves credit for first proposing it. The first astronomer to suggest the existence of a population was Frederick C. That same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered. Kuiper was operating on the common in his time that Pluto was the size of Earth and had therefore scattered these bodies out toward the Oort cloud or out of the Solar System. Were Kuipers hypothesis correct, there would not be a Kuiper belt today, the hypothesis took many other forms in the following decades. Cameron postulated the existence of a mass of small material on the outskirts of the solar system. Observation, however, ruled out this hypothesis, in 1977, Charles Kowal discovered 2060 Chiron, an icy planetoid with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. He used a blink comparator, the device that had allowed Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto nearly 50 years before
24.
(225088) 2007 OR10
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2007 OR10 is a trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun in the scattered disc, approximately 1500 kilometers in diameter. It is the third-largest known body in the Solar System past the orbit of Neptune, according to current estimates as of May 2016, it is slightly larger than Makemake or Haumea, and is hence almost certainly a dwarf planet. 2007 OR10 was discovered by California Institute of Technology astronomers as part of the PhD thesis of Megan E. Schwamb, Brown nicknamed the object Snow White for its presumed white color, because it would have to be very large or very bright to be detected by their survey. It was also the seventh dwarf discovered by Browns team, after Quaoar in 2002, Sedna in 2003, Haumea and Orcus in 2004, and Makemake and Eris in 2005. However,2007 OR10 turned out to be one of the reddest objects in the Kuiper belt, comparable only to Quaoar,2007 OR10 is currently the largest known object in the Solar System without an official name. However, as of 2015, Brown had yet to propose a name,2007 OR10 came to perihelion around 1857. As of February 2016 it is located 87.5 AU from the Sun and this makes it the third-farthest known large body in the Solar System, after V774104 and Eris, and farther out than Sedna. It has been farther from the Sun than Sedna since 2013,2007 OR10 will be farther than both Sedna and Eris by 2045, and it will reach aphelion in 2130. The size of an object can be calculated from its absolute magnitude,2007 OR10 has an absolute magnitude of 1.92, which makes it the fifth-brightest TNO known, a little less bright than Sedna and brighter than Orcus. 2007 OR10 is among the reddest objects known and this is probably in part due to methane frosts, which turn red when bombarded by sunlight and cosmic rays. The spectrum of 2007 OR10 shows signatures for both ice and methane, which makes it similar in composition to Quaoar. The presence of red methane frost on the surfaces of both 2007 OR10 and Quaoar implies the existence of a methane atmosphere on both objects, slowly evaporating into space. Although 2007 OR10 comes closer to the Sun than Quaoar, and is warm enough that a methane atmosphere should evaporate. In particular,2007 OR10s large size means that it is likely to retain even nitrogen, the presence of water ice on the surface of 2007 OR10 implies a brief period of cryovolcanism in its distant past. The Deep Ecliptic Survey shows the orbit to be in a 3,10 resonance with Neptune, the MPC lists it as a scattered-disc object. 2007 OR10 was discovered when searching for objects in the region of Sedna,2007 OR10 has been observed 46 times over seven oppositions with a precovery image from 1985. It was formally announced on 7 January 2009, the IAU has not addressed the possibility of accepting additional dwarf planets since before the discovery of 2007 OR10 was announced. If the orbit of OR10s small satellite can be determined, its mass could be calculated directly
25.
50000 Quaoar
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50000 Quaoar is a Kuiper belt object roughly half the size of Pluto, with a diameter of 1110±5 km. It is large enough and massive enough that it is probably a dwarf planet and its orbit in the Kuiper belt is not in resonance with Neptune, which means it is a classical Kuiper belt object. Quaoar has one moon, Weywot. Quaoar was discovered in 2002 and its moon in 2007 and it was named after the Tongva creator deity and its moon after his son. Signs of water ice have been found, which suggests that cryovolcanism may be occurring, a small amount of methane is present on Quaoars surface, which can only be retained by the largest Kuiper belt objects. The discovery of this magnitude 18.5 object, at the time located in the constellation Ophiuchus, was announced on October 7,2002, the earliest prediscovery image proved to be a May 25,1954 plate from Palomar Observatory. Quaoar is named for the Tongva creator god, following International Astronomical Union naming conventions for non-resonant Kuiper belt objects, the Tongva are the native people of the area around Los Angeles, where the discovery of Quaoar was made. Brown et al. had picked the name with the more intuitive spelling Kwawar, prior to IAU approval of the name, Quaoar went by the provisional designation 2002 LM60. However, subsequent even-larger discoveries were simply numbered according to the order in which their orbits were confirmed, Quaoar was later supplanted by Eris, Sedna, Haumea, and Makemake, though Sedna was later found to be somewhat smaller than Quaoar. Quaoar is about as massive as Plutos moon Charon, which is approximately 2 1⁄2 times as massive as Orcus, Quaoar is roughly one twelfth the diameter of Earth, one third the diameter of the Moon, and half the size of Pluto. Quaoar was the first trans-Neptunian object to be measured directly from Hubble Space Telescope images, using a new, given its distance Quaoar is on the limit of the HST resolution and its image is consequently smeared on a few adjacent pixels. This method was applied by the same authors to measure the size of Eris. The uncorrected 2004 HST estimates only marginally agree with the 2007 infrared measurements by the Spitzer Space Telescope that suggest a higher albedo and consequently a smaller diameter. Adopting a Uranian-satellite limb darkening profile suggests that the 2004 HST size estimate for Quaoar was approximately 40% too large, using a weighted average of the SST and corrected HST estimates, Quaoar, as of 2010, can be estimated at about 890±70 km in diameter. On 4 May 2011 Quaoar occulted a 16th-magnitude star, which gave 1170 km as the longest chord, New measurement from Herschel Space Observatory with revised data from SST suggested that Quaoar has a diameter of 1070±38 km and its satellite, Weywot, of 81±11 km. Because Quaoar is an object, the mass of the system can be calculated from the orbit of the secondary. Quaoars estimated density of around 2.2 g/cm3 and estimated size of 1,100 km suggests that it is a dwarf planet. Mike Brown estimates that rocky bodies around 900 km in diameter relax into hydrostatic equilibrium, with an estimated mass greater than 1
26.
90377 Sedna
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90377 Sedna is a large minor planet in the outer reaches of the Solar System that was, as of 2015, at a distance of about 86 astronomical units from the Sun, about three times as far as Neptune. Spectroscopy has revealed that Sednas surface composition is similar to that of some other objects, being largely a mixture of water, methane. Its surface is one of the reddest among Solar System objects and it is most likely a dwarf planet. Sedna has a long and elongated orbit, taking approximately 11,400 years to complete. These facts have led to speculation about its origin. The Minor Planet Center currently places Sedna in the scattered disc, others speculate that it might have been tugged into its current orbit by a passing star, perhaps one within the Suns birth cluster, or even that it was captured from another star system. Another hypothesis suggests that its orbit may be evidence for a planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. Astronomer Michael E. Sedna was discovered by Michael Brown, Chad Trujillo, the discovery formed part of a survey begun in 2001 with the Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California using Yales 160 megapixel Palomar Quest camera. On that day, an object was observed to move by 4.6 arcseconds over 3.1 hours relative to stars, later, the object was precovered on older images made by the Samuel Oschin telescope as well as on images from the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking consortium. These previous positions expanded its known orbital arc and allowed a precise calculation of its orbit. The team made the name Sedna public before the object had been officially numbered, brian Marsden, the head of the Minor Planet Center, said that such an action was a violation of protocol, and that some members of the IAU might vote against it. However, no objection was raised to the name, and no competing names were suggested, Sedna has the longest orbital period of any known object in the Solar System of comparable size or larger, calculated at around 11,400 years. Its orbit is eccentric, with an aphelion estimated at 937 AU. This perihelion was the largest of that of any known Solar System object until the discovery of 2012 VP113, at its aphelion, Sedna orbits the Sun at a mere 4% of Earths orbital speed. When Sedna was discovered it was 89.6 AU from the Sun approaching perihelion, Eris was later detected by the same survey near aphelion at 97 AU. Only the orbits of some long-period comets extend farther than that of Sedna, when first discovered, Sedna was thought to have an unusually long rotational period. It was initially speculated that Sednas rotation was slowed by the pull of a large binary companion. Sedna has a V-band absolute magnitude of about 1.8, at the time of its discovery it was the intrinsically brightest object found in the Solar System since Pluto in 1930
27.
90482 Orcus
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90482 Orcus, provisional designation 2004 DW, is a trans-Neptunian object from the Kuiper belt with a large moon, Vanth. It was discovered on 17 February 2004, by American astronomers Michael Brown of Caltech, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, precovery images taken by the Palomar Observatory as early as 1951, were later obtained from the Digitized Sky Survey. It is probably a dwarf planet, Orcus is a plutino, a trans-Neptunian object that is locked in a 2,3 resonance with the ice giant Neptune, making two revolutions around the Sun to every three of Neptunes. This is much like Pluto, except that it is constrained to always be in the phase of its orbit from Pluto, Orcus is at aphelion when Pluto is at perihelion. Moreover, the aphelion of Orcuss orbit points in nearly the direction from Plutos, although the eccentricities. Because of these similarities and contrasts, along with its large moon Vanth that recalls Plutos large moon Charon and this was a major consideration in selecting its name, as the deity Orcus was the Etruscan equivalent of the Roman Pluto, and later became an alternate name for Pluto. The surface of Orcus is relatively bright with albedo reaching 30%, grey in color, the ice is predominantly in crystalline form, which may be related to past cryovolcanic activity. Other compounds like methane or ammonia may also be present, the existence of a satellite allowed astronomers to determine the mass of the system, which is approximately equal to that of the Saturnian moon Tethys. The ratio of masses of Orcus and Vanth is uncertain, possibly anywhere from 1,33 to 1,12, the diameter of Orcus is estimated to be 761 or 807 km and the diameter of Vanth 378 or 267 km respectively, depending on their relative albedos. Orcus is in 2,3 orbital resonance with Neptune, having a period of 247 years. Orcuss orbit is similar to Plutos, but is oriented differently, although at one point its orbit approaches that of Neptune, the resonance between the two bodies means that Orcus itself is always a great distance away from Neptune. Over a 14, 000-year period Orcus stays more than 18 AU from Neptune, because their mutual resonance with Neptune constrains Orcus and Pluto to remain in opposite phases of their otherwise very similar motions, Orcus is sometimes described as the anti-Pluto. Orcus is currently 48.0 AU from the Sun and will come to aphelion in 2019, simulations by the Deep Ecliptic Survey show that over the next 10 million years Orcus can acquire a perihelion distance as small as 27.8 AU. The rotation period of the primary is not known, different photometric surveys have produced different results. Some show low amplitude variations with periods ranging from 7 to 21 hours, however, the value obtained by Ortiz et al. about 10.5 hours, seems to be the most likely one. The rotational poles of Orcus probably coincide with the poles of its moon. This means that Orcus is currently viewed pole-on, which could explain the absence of any rotational modulation of its brightness. If, however, the primary is tidally locked with the satellite,2004 DW was named after the Roman god of the underworld, Orcus, counterpart of the Greek Pluto
28.
(307261) 2002 MS4
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2002 MS4 is a large classical Kuiper belt object, the second-largest known object in the Solar System without a name, after 2007 OR10. It was discovered in 2002 by Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown, browns website lists it as nearly certain to be a dwarf planet. The Spitzer Space Telescope estimated it to have a diameter of 726±123 km and it is currently 47.2 AU from the Sun and will come to perihelion in 2123. It has been observed 55 times, with precovery images back to 1954, Orbital simulation from JPL / Ephemeris 2002 MS4 Precovery Images 2002 MS4 at the JPL Small-Body Database Discovery · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters
29.
120347 Salacia
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120347 Salacia, provisional designation 2004 SB60, is a trans-Neptunian object in the Kuiper belt, approximately 850 kilometers in diameter and almost certainly a dwarf planet. Salacia was discovered on 22 September 2004, by American astronomers Henry Roe, Michael Brown and Kristina Barkume at the Palomar Observatory in California and it has been observed 100 times, with precovery images back to 1982. Salacia orbits the Sun at a distance that is slightly larger than that of Pluto. It was named after the Roman goddess Salacia and has a single known moon, which may be a non-distinction if they are part of a single population that formed during the outward migration of Neptune. Salacias orbit is within the space of the Haumea collisional family. The total mass of the Salacia–Actaea system is ×1020 kg, of which some 96% should be in Salacia itself, Salacia is large enough that it is unlikely to have a significant porosity and is likely differentiated. A rocky core can be 0. 4–0.65 of the diameter of Salacia if its water-ice mantle is non-porous. Salacia has the lowest albedo and density known of any known big trans-Neptunian object, salacias infrared spectrum is almost featureless, indicating an abundance of water ice of less than 5% on the surface. Its light-curve amplitude is only 3%, mike Browns website lists Salacia as nearly certainly a dwarf planet, but the IAU has not formally recognized it as such. Salacia has one satellite, Actaea, that orbits its primary every 5. 49380±0.00016 d at a distance of 5619±89 km. It was discovered on 21 July 2006 by Keith S. Noll, Harold Levison, Denise Stephens, Actaea is 2. 372±0.060 magnitudes fainter than Salacia, implying a diameter ratio of 2.98 for equal albedos. Hence, assuming equal albedos, it has a diameter of 286±24 km Actaea has the color as Salacia. The ratio of its axis to its primarys Hill radius is 0.0023. Salacia and Actaea will next occult each other in 2067 and this minor planet was named after Salacia, the goddess of salt water and the wife of Neptune. Naming citation was published on 18 February 2011, the moons name, Actaea /ækˈtiːə/, was assigned on the same date. Actaea is a nereid or sea nymph, Salacia at Johnstons Archive Salacia, As big as Ceres, but much farther away 120347 Salacia at the JPL Small-Body Database Discovery · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters
30.
Planetary system
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A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non-stellar objects in orbit around a star or star system. The Sun together with its system, which includes Earth, is known as the Solar System. The term exoplanetary system is used in reference to other planetary systems. There are at least 2,701 known planetary systems, including 610 systems consisting of planets as of 1 April 2017. These systems contain more than 3,607 known exoplanets, debris disks are also known to be common, though other objects are more difficult to observe. Of particular interest to astrobiology is the zone of planetary systems where planets could have surface liquid water. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, the notion of a heliocentric Solar System, with the Sun at the center, is possibly first suggested in the Vedic literature of ancient India, which often refer to the Sun as the centre of spheres. Some interpret Aryabhattas writings in Āryabhaṭīya as implicitly heliocentric, the idea was first proposed in western philosophy and Greek astronomy as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos, but had received no support from most other ancient astronomers. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus, published in 1543, was the first mathematically predictive heliocentric model of a planetary system and he was burned at the stake for his ideas by the Roman Inquisition. In the 18th century the same possibility was mentioned by Isaac Newton in the General Scholium that concludes his Principia and his theories gained traction through the 19th and 20th centuries despite a lack of supporting evidence. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992, with the discovery of several planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmed detection of exoplanets of a star was made in 1995. The frequency of detections has increased since then, particularly through advancements in methods of detecting extrasolar planets, planetary systems come from protoplanetary disks that form around stars as part of the process of star formation. During formation of a system much material is gravitationally scattered into far-flung orbits, Planets orbiting pulsars have been discovered, and pulsars are the remnants of the supernova explosions of high-mass stars. Planets found around pulsars may have formed as a result of pre-existing stellar companions that were almost entirely evaporated by the supernova blast, alternatively, planets may form in an accretion disk of fallback matter surrounding a pulsar. Fallback disks of matter that failed to orbit during a supernova may also form planets around black holes. As the star mass, planets that are not engulfed move further out from the star. Planets in evolved binary systems, Hagai B, perets,13 Jan 2011 Can Planets survive Stellar Evolution
31.
4 Vesta
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Vesta, minor-planet designation 4 Vesta, is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres. It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, Vesta is the second-most-massive and second-largest body in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres, and it contributes an estimated 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt. It is slightly larger than Pallas, though more massive. Vesta is the last remaining rocky protoplanet of the kind that formed the terrestrial planets, numerous fragments of Vesta were ejected by collisions one and two billion years ago that left two enormous craters occupying much of Vestas southern hemisphere. Debris from these events has fallen to Earth as howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites, Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. Its maximum distance from the Sun is slightly greater than the distance of Ceres from the Sun. NASAs Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on 16 July 2011 for an exploration and left orbit on 5 September 2012 en route to its final destination. Researchers continue to examine data collected by Dawn for additional insights into the formation, Heinrich Olbers discovered Pallas in 1802, the year after the discovery of Ceres. He proposed that the two objects were the remnants of a destroyed planet and these orbital intersections were located in the constellations of Cetus and Virgo. Olbers commenced his search in 1802, and on 29 March 1807 he discovered Vesta in the constellation Virgo—a coincidence, because Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are not fragments of a larger body. Because the asteroid Juno had been discovered in 1804, this made Vesta the fourth object to be identified in the region that is now known as the asteroid belt, the discovery was announced in a letter addressed to German astronomer Johann H. Schröter dated 31 March. Gauss decided on the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta was the fourth asteroid to be discovered, hence the number 4 in its formal designation. The name Vesta, or national variants thereof, is in use with two exceptions, Greece and China. In Greek, the name adopted was the Hellenic equivalent of Vesta, Hestia, in English, in Chinese, Vesta is called the hearth-god star, 灶神星 zàoshénxīng, in contrast to the goddess Vesta, who goes by her Latin name. Upon its discovery, Vesta was, like Ceres, Pallas, the symbol representing the altar of Vesta with its sacred fire and was designed by Gauss. In Gausss conception, this was drawn, in its modern form, after the discovery of Vesta, no further objects were discovered for 38 years, and the Solar System was thought to have eleven planets. However, in 1845, new asteroids started being discovered at a rapid pace and it soon became clear that it would be impractical to continue inventing new planetary symbols indefinitely, and some of the existing ones proved difficult to draw quickly. That year, the problem was addressed by Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who suggested numbering asteroids in their order of discovery, thus, the fourth asteroid, Vesta, acquired the generic symbol ④
32.
Mars
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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is referred to as the Red Planet because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth. The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet, Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan, there are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and ExoMars rovers, liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is about 6⁄1000 that of the Earths, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be largely of water. The volume of ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted. On November 22,2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior, Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earths atmosphere. Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth with an area only slightly less than the total area of Earths dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earths volume and 11% of Earths mass, the red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch, other common colors include golden, brown, tan. Like Earth, Mars has differentiated into a metallic core overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of its interior imply a core with a radius of about 1,794 ±65 kilometers, consisting primarily of iron and this iron sulfide core is thought to be twice as rich in lighter elements than Earths. The core is surrounded by a mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet
33.
Asteroid
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Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
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Comet
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A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. This produces an atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of collections of ice, dust. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earths diameter, if sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures, Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt or its associated scattered disc, long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies extending from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to the nearest star. Long-period comets are set in motion towards the Sun from the Oort cloud by gravitational perturbations caused by passing stars, hyperbolic comets may pass once through the inner Solar System before being flung to interstellar space. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition, Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere surrounding their central nucleus. This atmosphere has parts termed the coma and the tail, however, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System, the discovery of main-belt comets and active centaur minor planets has blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets. As of November 2014 there are 5,253 known comets, however, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System is estimated to be one trillion. Roughly one comet per year is visible to the eye, though many of those are faint. Particularly bright examples are called Great Comets, the word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a latinisation of the Greek κομήτης, Κομήτης was derived from κομᾶν, which was itself derived from κόμη and was used to mean the tail of a comet. The astronomical symbol for comets is ☄, consisting of a disc with three hairlike extensions. The solid, core structure of a comet is known as the nucleus, cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. As such, they are described as dirty snowballs after Fred Whipples model
35.
Mercury (planet)
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Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbital period around the Sun of 88 days is the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System and it is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger to the gods. Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earths orbit as a planet, so it can only be seen visually in the morning or the evening sky. Also, like Venus and the Moon, the displays the complete range of phases as it moves around its orbit relative to Earth. Seen from Earth, this cycle of phases reoccurs approximately every 116 days, although Mercury can appear as a bright star-like object when viewed from Earth, its proximity to the Sun often makes it more difficult to see than Venus. Mercury is tidally or gravitationally locked with the Sun in a 3,2 resonance, as seen relative to the fixed stars, it rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun. As seen from the Sun, in a frame of reference that rotates with the orbital motion, an observer on Mercury would therefore see only one day every two years. Mercurys axis has the smallest tilt of any of the Solar Systems planets, at aphelion, Mercury is about 1.5 times as far from the Sun as it is at perihelion. Mercurys surface appears heavily cratered and is similar in appearance to the Moons, the polar regions are constantly below 180 K. The planet has no natural satellites. Mercury is one of four planets in the Solar System. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with a radius of 2,439.7 kilometres. Mercury is also smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede, Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% silicate material. Mercurys density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427 g/cm3, Mercurys density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earths high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the core, Mercury is much smaller, therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron. Geologists estimate that Mercurys core occupies about 55% of its volume, Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. Surrounding the core is a 500–700 km mantle consisting of silicates, based on data from the Mariner 10 mission and Earth-based observation, Mercurys crust is estimated to be 35 km thick. One distinctive feature of Mercurys surface is the presence of narrow ridges
36.
Charon (moon)
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Charon, also known as Pluto I, is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It was discovered in 1978 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, with half the diameter and one eighth the mass of Pluto, it is a very large moon in comparison to its parent body. Its gravitational influence is such that the barycenter of the Pluto–Charon system lies outside Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft is the only probe that has visited the Pluto system. It approached Charon to within 27,000 km, Charon was discovered by United States Naval Observatory astronomer James Christy, using the 1. 55-meter Flagstaff telescope two months prior. Christy noticed that a slight elongation appeared periodically, later, the bulge was confirmed on plates dating back to April 29,1965. Subsequent observations of Pluto determined that the bulge was due to an accompanying body. The periodicity of the bulge corresponded to Plutos rotation period, which was known from Plutos light curve. This indicated a synchronous orbit, which suggested that the bulge effect was real. Doubts about Charons existence were erased when it and Pluto entered a period of mutual eclipses. This occurs when the Pluto–Charon orbital plane is edge-on as seen from Earth and it was fortuitous that one of these intervals happened to occur soon after Charons discovery. Charon was originally known by the temporary designation S/1978 P1, on June 24,1978, Christy first suggested the name Charon as a scientific-sounding version of his wife Charlenes nickname, Char. The IAU officially adopted the name in late 1985 and it was announced on January 3,1986, there is minor debate over the preferred pronunciation of the name. These indicate only one pronunciation of Charon when referring specifically to Plutos moon, speakers of many languages other than English, and many English-speaking astronomers as well, follow this pronunciation. However, Christy himself pronounced the ch as sh, after his wife Charlene, simulation work published in 2005 by Robin Canup suggested that Charon could have been formed by a collision around 4.5 billion years ago, much like Earth and the Moon. In this model, a large Kuiper belt object struck Pluto at high velocity, destroying itself and blasting off much of Plutos outer mantle, however, such an impact should result in an icier Charon and rockier Pluto than scientists have found. It is now thought that Pluto and Charon might have been two bodies that collided before going into orbit about each other, the collision would have been violent enough to boil off volatile ices like methane but not violent enough to have destroyed either body. The very similar density of Pluto and Charon implies that the parent bodies were not fully differentiated when the impact occurred, Charon and Pluto orbit each other every 6.387 days. The two objects are locked to one another, so each keeps the same face towards the other
37.
Moon
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The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth, being Earths only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, following Jupiters satellite Io, the Moon is second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 384,400 km, the Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earths sky, after the Sun and its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its cycle of phases have made the Moon an important cultural influence since ancient times on language, calendars, art. The Moons gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and this matching of apparent visual size will not continue in the far future. The Moons linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ±0.07 centimetres per year, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by uncrewed spacecraft. The usual English proper name for Earths natural satellite is the Moon, the noun moon is derived from moone, which developed from mone, which is derived from Old English mōna, which ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mǣnōn, like all Germanic language cognates. Occasionally, the name Luna is used, in literature, especially science fiction, Luna is used to distinguish it from other moons, while in poetry, the name has been used to denote personification of our moon. The principal modern English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar, a less common adjective is selenic, derived from the Ancient Greek Selene, from which is derived the prefix seleno-. Both the Greek Selene and the Roman goddess Diana were alternatively called Cynthia, the names Luna, Cynthia, and Selene are reflected in terminology for lunar orbits in words such as apolune, pericynthion, and selenocentric. The name Diana is connected to dies meaning day, several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moons formation 4.51 billion years ago, and some 60 million years after the origin of the Solar System. These hypotheses also cannot account for the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. This hypothesis, although not perfect, perhaps best explains the evidence, eighteen months prior to an October 1984 conference on lunar origins, Bill Hartmann, Roger Phillips, and Jeff Taylor challenged fellow lunar scientists, You have eighteen months. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to computer, do whatever you have to. Dont come to our conference unless you have something to say about the Moons birth, at the 1984 conference at Kona, Hawaii, the giant impact hypothesis emerged as the most popular. Afterward there were only two groups, the giant impact camp and the agnostics. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System, computer simulations of a giant impact have produced results that are consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the present angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system
38.
Orbital eccentricity
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The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle. A value of 0 is an orbit, values between 0 and 1 form an elliptical orbit,1 is a parabolic escape orbit. The term derives its name from the parameters of conic sections and it is normally used for the isolated two-body problem, but extensions exist for objects following a rosette orbit through the galaxy. In a two-body problem with inverse-square-law force, every orbit is a Kepler orbit, the eccentricity of this Kepler orbit is a non-negative number that defines its shape. The limit case between an ellipse and a hyperbola, when e equals 1, is parabola, radial trajectories are classified as elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic based on the energy of the orbit, not the eccentricity. Radial orbits have zero angular momentum and hence eccentricity equal to one, keeping the energy constant and reducing the angular momentum, elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits each tend to the corresponding type of radial trajectory while e tends to 1. For a repulsive force only the trajectory, including the radial version, is applicable. For elliptical orbits, a simple proof shows that arcsin yields the projection angle of a circle to an ellipse of eccentricity e. For example, to view the eccentricity of the planet Mercury, next, tilt any circular object by that angle and the apparent ellipse projected to your eye will be of that same eccentricity. From Medieval Latin eccentricus, derived from Greek ἔκκεντρος ekkentros out of the center, from ἐκ- ek-, eccentric first appeared in English in 1551, with the definition a circle in which the earth, sun. Five years later, in 1556, a form of the word was added. The eccentricity of an orbit can be calculated from the state vectors as the magnitude of the eccentricity vector, e = | e | where. For elliptical orbits it can also be calculated from the periapsis and apoapsis since rp = a and ra = a, where a is the semimajor axis. E = r a − r p r a + r p =1 −2 r a r p +1 where, rp is the radius at periapsis. For Earths annual orbit path, ra/rp ratio = longest_radius / shortest_radius ≈1.034 relative to center point of path, the eccentricity of the Earths orbit is currently about 0.0167, the Earths orbit is nearly circular. Venus and Neptune have even lower eccentricity, over hundreds of thousands of years, the eccentricity of the Earths orbit varies from nearly 0.0034 to almost 0.058 as a result of gravitational attractions among the planets. The table lists the values for all planets and dwarf planets, Mercury has the greatest orbital eccentricity of any planet in the Solar System. Such eccentricity is sufficient for Mercury to receive twice as much solar irradiation at perihelion compared to aphelion, before its demotion from planet status in 2006, Pluto was considered to be the planet with the most eccentric orbit
39.
Orbital inclination
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Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an objects orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth directly above the equator, the plane of the orbit is the same as the Earths equatorial plane. The general case is that the orbit is tilted, it spends half an orbit over the northern hemisphere. If the orbit swung between 20° north latitude and 20° south latitude, then its orbital inclination would be 20°, the inclination is one of the six orbital elements describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit. It is the angle between the plane and the plane of reference, normally stated in degrees. For a satellite orbiting a planet, the plane of reference is usually the plane containing the planets equator, for planets in the Solar System, the plane of reference is usually the ecliptic, the plane in which the Earth orbits the Sun. This reference plane is most practical for Earth-based observers, therefore, Earths inclination is, by definition, zero. Inclination could instead be measured with respect to another plane, such as the Suns equator or the invariable plane, the inclination of orbits of natural or artificial satellites is measured relative to the equatorial plane of the body they orbit, if they orbit sufficiently closely. The equatorial plane is the perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the central body. An inclination of 30° could also be described using an angle of 150°, the convention is that the normal orbit is prograde, an orbit in the same direction as the planet rotates. Inclinations greater than 90° describe retrograde orbits, thus, An inclination of 0° means the orbiting body has a prograde orbit in the planets equatorial plane. An inclination greater than 0° and less than 90° also describe prograde orbits, an inclination of 63. 4° is often called a critical inclination, when describing artificial satellites orbiting the Earth, because they have zero apogee drift. An inclination of exactly 90° is an orbit, in which the spacecraft passes over the north and south poles of the planet. An inclination greater than 90° and less than 180° is a retrograde orbit, an inclination of exactly 180° is a retrograde equatorial orbit. For gas giants, the orbits of moons tend to be aligned with the giant planets equator, the inclination of exoplanets or members of multiple stars is the angle of the plane of the orbit relative to the plane perpendicular to the line-of-sight from Earth to the object. An inclination of 0° is an orbit, meaning the plane of its orbit is parallel to the sky. An inclination of 90° is an orbit, meaning the plane of its orbit is perpendicular to the sky
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Plutino
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In astronomy, a plutino is a trans-Neptunian object in 2,3 mean-motion resonance with Neptune. For every 2 orbits that a plutino makes, Neptune orbits 3 times, the term plutino derived from the dwarf planet Pluto, the largest and the first plutino discovered. The term does not imply common physical characteristics, Plutinos are named after mythological creatures associated with the underworld. Plutinos form the part of the Kuiper belt and represent about a quarter of the known Kuiper belt objects. Plutinos are the largest class of the resonant trans-Neptunian objects, aside from Pluto itself, the first plutino,1993 RO, was discovered on September 16,1993. It is thought that objects that are currently in mean orbital resonances with Neptune initially followed independent heliocentric paths. As Neptune migrated outward early in the Solar Systems history, the bodies it approached would have been scattered, during this process, the 3,2 resonance is the strongest and most stable among all resonances. This is the reason it contains the largest number of bodies. The orbital periods of plutinos cluster around 247.3 years, the gravitational influence of Pluto is usually neglected given its small mass. However, the width is very narrow and only a few times larger than Pluto’s Hill sphere. Consequently, depending on the eccentricity, some plutinos will be driven out of the resonance by interactions with Pluto. Numerical simulations suggest that the orbits of plutinos with an eccentricity 10%–30% smaller or larger than that of Pluto are not stable over Ga timescales, the plutinos brighter than HV=6 include, David Jewitt on Plutinos Minor Planet Center, List of TNOs MPC List of Distant Minor Planets
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Planets beyond Neptune
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Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. In 1978, Pluto was conclusively determined to be too small for its gravity to affect the giant planets, resulting in a brief search for a tenth planet. As of March 2014, observations with the WISE telescope have ruled out the possibility of a Saturn-sized object out to 10,000 AU, and a Jupiter-sized or larger object out to 26,000 AU. In 2016 further work showed this unknown distant planet is likely on an inclined, eccentric orbit that goes no closer than about 200 AU, the orbit is predicted to be anti-aligned to the clustered extreme trans-Neptunian objects. Because Pluto is no longer considered a planet by the International Astronomical Union, Le Verrier predicted the position of this new planet and sent his calculations to German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. On 23 September 1846, the following his receipt of the letter, Galle and his student Heinrich dArrest discovered Neptune. There remained some slight discrepancies in the giant planets orbits and these were taken to indicate the existence of yet another planet orbiting beyond Neptune. Even before Neptunes discovery, some speculated that one alone was not enough to explain the discrepancy. Hansens opinion was that a body could not adequately explain the motion of Uranus. In 1848, Jacques Babinet raised an objection to Le Verriers calculations, claiming that Neptunes observed mass was smaller and its orbit larger than Le Verrier had initially predicted. He postulated, based largely on simple subtraction from Le Verriers calculations, that another planet of roughly 12 Earth masses, which he named Hyperion, must exist beyond Neptune. Le Verrier denounced Babinets hypothesis, saying, absolutely nothing by which one could determine the position of another planet, astronomer George Forbes concluded on the basis of this evidence that two planets must exist beyond Neptune. These elements concorded suggestively with those made independently by another astronomer named David Peck Todd, however, sceptics argued that the orbits of the comets involved were still too uncertain to produce meaningful results. In 1900 and 1901, Harvard College Observatory director William Henry Pickering led two searches for trans-Neptunian planets, the second was launched when Gabriel Dallet suggested that a single trans-Neptunian planet lying at 47 AU could account for the motion of Uranus. Pickering agreed to examine plates for any suspected planets, in neither case were any found. In 1909, Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, an astronomer with a reputation as a contrarian, opined that there is certainly one. Tentatively naming the first planet Oceanus, he placed their respective distances at 42,56 and 72 AU from the Sun and he gave no indication as to how he determined their existence, and no known searches were mounted to locate them. In 1911, Indian astronomer Venkatesh P, the three inner Galilean moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa and Ganymede, are locked in a complicated 1,2,4 resonance called a Laplace resonance
42.
Planetesimal
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Planetesimals /plænᵻˈtɛsᵻməlz/ are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and in debris disks. When the bodies reach sizes of one kilometer, then they can attract each other directly through their mutual gravity. This is how planetesimals are often defined, bodies that are smaller than planetesimals must rely on Brownian motion or turbulent motions in the gas to cause the collisions that can lead to sticking. It is generally thought that about 3, a few planetesimals may have been captured as moons, such as Phobos and Deimos and many of the small high-inclination moons of the giant planets. Planetesimals that have survived to the current day are valuable to science because they contain information about the formation of the Solar System, although their exteriors are subjected to intense solar radiation that can alter their chemistry, their interiors contain pristine material essentially untouched since the planetesimal was formed. This makes each planetesimal a time capsule, and their composition might reveal the conditions in the Solar Nebula from which our planetary system was formed, the word planetesimal comes from the mathematical concept infinitesimal and literally means an ultimately small fraction of a planet. This corresponds to objects larger than approximately 1 km in the solar nebula, bodies large enough not only to keep together by gravitation but to change the path of approaching rocks over distances of several radii start to grow faster. These bodies, larger than 100 km to 1000 km, are called embryos or protoplanets, in other words, some planetesimals became other types of body once planetary formation had finished, and may be referred to by either or both names. The above definition is not endorsed by the International Astronomical Union, there is also no exact dividing line between a planetesimal and protoplanet. Discovering the Essential Universe by Neil F. Comins Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, planetesimals - Early Differentiation and Consequences for Planets. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017, ISBN9781107118485
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Small Solar System body
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A Small Solar System Body is an object in the Solar System that is neither a planet, nor a dwarf planet, nor a natural satellite. The term was first defined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, all other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar System Bodies. These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects, comets and this encompasses all comets and all minor planets other than those that are dwarf planets. Except for the largest, which are in equilibrium, natural satellites differ from small Solar System bodies not in size. The orbits of satellites are not centered on the Sun, but around other Solar System objects such as planets, dwarf planets. Some of the larger small Solar System bodies may be reclassified in future as dwarf planets, the orbits of the vast majority of small Solar System bodies are located in two distinct areas, namely the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. These two belts possess some internal structure related to perturbations by the planets, and have fairly loosely defined boundaries. Other areas of the Solar System also encompass small bodies in smaller concentrations and these include the near-Earth asteroids, centaurs, comets, and scattered disc objects
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Venus
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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the Solar System and it is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6. Because Venus orbits within Earths orbit it is a planet and never appears to venture far from the Sun. Venus is a planet and is sometimes called Earths sister planet because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun. It is radically different from Earth in other respects and it has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 92 times that of Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a surface temperature of 735 K. Venus is shrouded by an layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid. It may have had water oceans in the past, but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a greenhouse effect. The water has probably photodissociated, and the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. Venuss surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism. As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as the closest planet to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft, Venuss thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more missions. Venus is one of the four planets in the Solar System
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Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
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Jupiter
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity, the Romans named it after their god Jupiter. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium and it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rotation, the planets shape is that of an oblate spheroid. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence, a prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere, Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a greater than that of the planet Mercury. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, the latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4,2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa, Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun. Astronomers have discovered nearly 500 planetary systems with multiple planets, Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth. Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter and it is the largest of the four giant planets in the Solar System and hence its largest planet. It has a diameter of 142,984 km at its equator, the average density of Jupiter,1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. Jupiters upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, a helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiters atmosphere is approximately 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, the atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, the outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. The interior contains denser materials - by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found
47.
Saturn
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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with a radius about nine times that of Earth. Although it has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, with its larger volume Saturn is just over 95 times more massive, Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture, its astronomical symbol represents the gods sickle. Saturns interior is composed of a core of iron–nickel and rock. This core is surrounded by a layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium. Saturn has a yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. Saturns magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth of Jupiters, the outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, higher than on Jupiter, sixty-two moons are known to orbit Saturn, of which fifty-three are officially named. This does not include the hundreds of moonlets comprising the rings, Saturn is a gas giant because it is predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium. It lacks a definite surface, though it may have a solid core, Saturns rotation causes it to have the shape of an oblate spheroid, that is, it is flattened at the poles and bulges at its equator. Its equatorial and polar radii differ by almost 10%,60,268 km versus 54,364 km, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, the other giant planets in the Solar System, are also oblate but to a lesser extent. Saturn is the planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water—about 30% less. Although Saturns core is considerably denser than water, the specific density of the planet is 0.69 g/cm3 due to the atmosphere. Jupiter has 318 times the Earths mass, while Saturn is 95 times the mass of the Earth, together, Jupiter and Saturn hold 92% of the total planetary mass in the Solar System. On 8 January 2015, NASA reported determining the center of the planet Saturn, the temperature, pressure, and density inside Saturn all rise steadily toward the core, which causes hydrogen to transition into a metal in the deeper layers. Standard planetary models suggest that the interior of Saturn is similar to that of Jupiter, having a rocky core surrounded by hydrogen. This core is similar in composition to the Earth, but more dense, in 2004, they estimated that the core must be 9–22 times the mass of the Earth, which corresponds to a diameter of about 25,000 km. This is surrounded by a liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen that gradually transitions to a gas with increasing altitude
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– discovered on January 1, 1801, 45 years before Neptune. Considered a planet for half a century before reclassification as an asteroid. Accepted as a dwarf planet by the IAU on September 13, 2006.
. Bibcode:2006AJ....132..290B. doi:10.1086/504422. Retrieved February 10, 2008.
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