1.
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
2.
Dwarf planet
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A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite. The International Astronomical Union currently recognizes five dwarf planets, Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, another hundred or so known objects in the Solar System are suspected to be dwarf planets. Individual astronomers recognize several of these, and in August 2011 Mike Brown published a list of 390 candidate objects, Stern states that there are more than a dozen known dwarf planets. Only two of these bodies, Ceres and Pluto, have observed in enough detail to demonstrate that they actually fit the IAUs definition. The IAU accepted Eris as a dwarf planet because it is more massive than Pluto and they subsequently decided that unnamed trans-Neptunian objects with an absolute magnitude brighter than +1 are to be named under the assumption that they are dwarf planets. The classification of bodies in other systems with the characteristics of dwarf planets has not been addressed. Starting in 1801, astronomers discovered Ceres and other bodies between Mars and Jupiter which were for some decades considered to be planets. Between then and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23, astronomers started using the asteroid for the smaller bodies. With the discovery of Pluto in 1930, most astronomers considered the Solar System to have nine planets and it was roughly one-twentieth the mass of Mercury, which made Pluto by far the smallest planet. Although it was more than ten times as massive as the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres. In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the region of space as Pluto. Many of these shared several of Plutos key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as the largest member of a new class of objects and this led some astronomers to stop referring to Pluto as a planet. Several terms, including subplanet and planetoid, started to be used for the now known as dwarf planets. By 2005, three trans-Neptunian objects comparable in size to Pluto had been reported and it became clear that either they would also have to be classified as planets, or Pluto would have to be reclassified. Astronomers were also confident that more objects as large as Pluto would be discovered, Eris was discovered in January 2005, it was thought to be slightly larger than Pluto, and some reports informally referred to it as the tenth planet. As a consequence, the became a matter of intense debate during the IAU General Assembly in August 2006. The IAUs initial draft proposal included Charon, Eris, and Ceres in the list of planets, dropping Charon from the list, the new proposal also removed Pluto, Ceres, and Eris, because they have not cleared their orbits. The IAUs final Resolution 5A preserved this three-category system for the bodies orbiting the Sun
3.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
4.
Neptune
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Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun in the Solar System. In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the planet. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is more massive than its near-twin Uranus. Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at a distance of 30.1 astronomical units. It is named after the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol ♆, Neptune is not visible to the unaided eye and is the only planet in the Solar System found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to perturbation by an unknown planet. Neptune was subsequently observed with a telescope on 23 September 1846 by Johann Galle within a degree of the predicted by Urbain Le Verrier. Its largest moon, Triton, was discovered shortly thereafter, though none of the remaining known 14 moons were located telescopically until the 20th century. The planets distance from Earth gives it a small apparent size. Neptune was visited by Voyager 2, when it flew by the planet on 25 August 1989, the advent of the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics has recently allowed for additional detailed observations from afar. Neptunes composition can be compared and contrasted with the Solar Systems other giant planets, however, its interior, like that of Uranus, is primarily composed of ices and rock, which is why Uranus and Neptune are normally considered ice giants to emphasise this distinction. Traces of methane in the outermost regions in part account for the blue appearance. In contrast to the hazy, relatively featureless atmosphere of Uranus, Neptunes atmosphere has active, for example, at the time of the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, the planets southern hemisphere had a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, because of its great distance from the Sun, Neptunes outer atmosphere is one of the coldest places in the Solar System, with temperatures at its cloud tops approaching 55 K. Temperatures at the centre are approximately 5,400 K. Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system. On both occasions, Galileo seems to have mistaken Neptune for a star when it appeared close—in conjunction—to Jupiter in the night sky, hence. At his first observation in December 1612, Neptune was almost stationary in the sky because it had just turned retrograde that day and this apparent backward motion is created when Earths orbit takes it past an outer planet. Because Neptune was only beginning its yearly cycle, the motion of the planet was far too slight to be detected with Galileos small telescope
5.
Giant planet
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A giant planet is any massive planet. They are usually composed of low-boiling-point materials, rather than rock or other solid matter. There are four giant planets in the Solar System, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. Many extrasolar giant planets have been identified orbiting other stars, giant planets are also sometimes called jovian planets, after Jupiter. They are also known as gas giants. However, many astronomers apply the term only to Jupiter and Saturn, classifying Uranus and Neptune. Both names are misleading, all of the giant planets consist primarily of fluids above their critical points. The principal components are hydrogen and helium in the case of Jupiter and Saturn, the defining differences between a very low-mass brown dwarf and a gas giant are debated. One school of thought is based on formation, the other, part of the debate concerns whether brown dwarfs must, by definition, have experienced nuclear fusion at some point in their history. The term gas giant was coined in 1952 by the fiction writer James Blish and was originally used to refer to all giant planets. Arguably it is something of a misnomer, because throughout most of the volume of these planets the pressure is so high that matter is not in gaseous form. Other than solids in the core and the layers of the atmosphere, all matter is above the critical point. Fluid planet would be an accurate term. Jupiter also has metallic hydrogen near its center, but much of its volume is hydrogen, helium, the observable atmospheres of all these planets are quite thin compared to their radii, only extending perhaps one percent of the way to the center. Thus the observable portions are gaseous, in the outer Solar System, hydrogen and helium are referred to as gases, water, methane, and ammonia as ices, and silicates and metals as rock. When deep planetary interiors are considered, it may not be far off to say that, by ice astronomers mean oxygen and carbon, by rock they mean silicon, and by gas they mean hydrogen and helium. The many ways in which Uranus and Neptune differ from Jupiter, with this terminology in mind, some astronomers have started referring to Uranus and Neptune as ice giants to indicate the predominance of the ices in their interior composition. The alternative term jovian planet refers to the Roman god Jupiter—the genitive form of which is Jovis, objects large enough to start deuterium fusion are called brown dwarfs, and these occupy the mass range between that of large giant planets and the lowest-mass stars
6.
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
7.
Oort cloud
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The Oort cloud, sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, is a theoretical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals believed to surround the Sun to as far as somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 AU. It is divided into two regions, a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud and a spherical outer Oort cloud, both regions lie beyond the heliosphere and in interstellar space. The Kuiper belt and the disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth as far from the Sun as the Oort cloud. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the boundary of the Solar System. The outer Oort cloud is only bound to the Solar System. These forces occasionally dislodge comets from their orbits within the cloud, based on their orbits, most of the short-period comets may come from the scattered disc, but some may still have originated from the Oort cloud. In 1932, the Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik postulated that long-period comets originated in a cloud at the outermost edge of the Solar System. The idea was revived by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort as a means to resolve a paradox. Thus, Oort reasoned, a comet could not have formed while in its current orbit, there are two main classes of comet, short-period comets and long-period comets. Ecliptic comets have relatively small orbits, below 10 AU, and follow the ecliptic plane, all long-period comets have very large orbits, on the order of thousands of AU, and appear from every direction in the sky. Oort noted that there was a peak in numbers of comets with aphelia of roughly 20,000 AU. The Oort cloud is thought to occupy a vast space from somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 AU to as far as 50,000 AU from the Sun, some estimates place the outer edge at between 100,000 and 200,000 AU. The region can be subdivided into a spherical outer Oort cloud of 20, 000–50,000 AU, the outer cloud is only weakly bound to the Sun and supplies the long-period comets to inside the orbit of Neptune. The inner Oort cloud is known as the Hills cloud, named after Jack G. Hills. The Hills cloud explains the existence of the Oort cloud after billions of years. The outer Oort cloud may have trillions of objects larger than 1 km, earlier it was thought to be more massive, but improved knowledge of the size distribution of long-period comets led to lower estimates. The mass of the inner Oort cloud has not been characterized, if analyses of comets are representative of the whole, the vast majority of Oort-cloud objects consist of ices such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. The Oort cloud is thought to be a remnant of the protoplanetary disc that formed around the Sun approximately 4.6 billion years ago
8.
Scattered disc
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The scattered disc is a distant circumstellar disc in the Solar System that is sparsely populated by icy minor planets, a subset of the broader family of trans-Neptunian objects. The scattered-disc objects have orbital eccentricities ranging as high as 0.8, inclinations as high as 40° and these extreme orbits are thought to be the result of gravitational scattering by the gas giants, and the objects continue to be subject to perturbation by the planet Neptune. Although the closest scattered-disc objects approach the Sun at about 30–35 AU and this makes scattered objects among the most distant and coldest objects in the Solar System. Eventually, perturbations from the giant planets send such objects towards the Sun, many Oort cloud objects are also thought to have originated in the scattered disc. Detached objects are not sharply distinct from scattered disc objects, during the 1980s, the use of CCD-based cameras in telescopes made it possible to directly produce electronic images that could then be readily digitized and transferred to digital images. Because the CCD captured more light than film and the blinking could now be done at a computer screen. A flood of new discoveries was the result, over a thousand objects were detected between 1992 and 2006. The first scattered-disc object to be recognised as such was 1996 TL66, three more were identified by the same survey in 1999,1999 CV118,1999 CY118, and 1999 CF119. The first object presently classified as an SDO to be discovered was 1995 TL8, as of 2011, over 200 SDOs have been identified, including 2007 UK126,2002 TC302, Eris, Sedna and 2004 VN112. Known trans-Neptunian objects are divided into two subpopulations, the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc. A third reservoir of trans-Neptunian objects, the Oort cloud, has been hypothesized, some researchers further suggest a transitional space between the scattered disc and the inner Oort cloud, populated with detached objects. Those in 3,2 resonances are known as plutinos, because Pluto is the largest member of their group, in contrast to the Kuiper belt, the scattered-disc population can be disturbed by Neptune. Scattered-disc objects come within range of Neptune at their closest approaches. Some objects, like 1999 TD10, blur the distinction and the Minor Planet Center, the MPC also makes a clear distinction between the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, separating those objects in stable orbits from those in scattered orbits. Another term used is scattered Kuiper-belt object for bodies of the scattered disc and this delineation is inadequate over the age of the Solar System, since bodies trapped in resonances could pass from a scattering phase to a non-scattering phase numerous times. That is, trans-Neptunian objects could travel back and forth between the Kuiper belt and the disc over time. In the a >30 AU region, the region of the Solar System populated by objects with semi-major axes greater than 30 AU, the Minor Planet Center classifies the trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna as a scattered-disc object. Under this definition, an object with a greater than 40 AU could be classified as outside the scattered disc
9.
Orbital resonance
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Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of the bodies, i. e. their ability to alter or constrain each others orbits. In most cases, this results in an interaction, in which the bodies exchange momentum. Under some circumstances, a resonant system can be stable and self-correcting, examples are the 1,2,4 resonance of Jupiters moons Ganymede, Europa and Io, and the 2,3 resonance between Pluto and Neptune. Unstable resonances with Saturns inner moons give rise to gaps in the rings of Saturn, thus the 2,3 ratio above means Pluto completes two orbits in the time it takes Neptune to complete three. In the case of resonance relationships between three or more bodies, either type of ratio may be used and the type of ratio will be specified. Since the discovery of Newtons law of gravitation in the 17th century. The stable orbits that arise in a two-body approximation ignore the influence of other bodies and it was Laplace who found the first answers explaining the remarkable dance of the Galilean moons. It is fair to say that this field of study has remained very active since then. Before Newton, there was consideration of ratios and proportions in orbital motions, in what was called the music of the spheres. In general, a resonance may involve one or any combination of the orbit parameters. Act on any scale from short term, commensurable with the orbit periods, to secular. Lead to either long-term stabilization of the orbits or be the cause of their destabilization, a mean-motion orbital resonance occurs when two bodies have periods of revolution that are a simple integer ratio of each other. Depending on the details, this can either stabilize or destabilize the orbit, stabilization may occur when the two bodies move in such a synchronised fashion that they never closely approach. For instance, The orbits of Pluto and the plutinos are stable, despite crossing that of the much larger Neptune, the resonance ensures that, when they approach perihelion and Neptunes orbit, Neptune is consistently distant. Other Neptune-crossing bodies that were not in resonance were ejected from that region by strong perturbations due to Neptune. There are also smaller but significant groups of resonant trans-Neptunian objects occupying the 1,1,3,5,4,7,1,2 and 2,5 resonances, among others, with respect to Neptune. In the asteroid belt beyond 3.5 AU from the Sun, orbital resonances can also destabilize one of the orbits. For small bodies, destabilization is actually far more likely, for instance, In the asteroid belt within 3.5 AU from the Sun, the major mean-motion resonances with Jupiter are locations of gaps in the asteroid distribution, the Kirkwood gaps
10.
Angular momentum
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In physics, angular momentum is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important quantity in physics because it is a conserved quantity – the angular momentum of a system remains constant unless acted on by an external torque. The definition of momentum for a point particle is a pseudovector r×p. This definition can be applied to each point in continua like solids or fluids, unlike momentum, angular momentum does depend on where the origin is chosen, since the particles position is measured from it. The angular momentum of an object can also be connected to the angular velocity ω of the object via the moment of inertia I. However, while ω always points in the direction of the rotation axis, Angular momentum is additive, the total angular momentum of a system is the vector sum of the angular momenta. For continua or fields one uses integration, torque can be defined as the rate of change of angular momentum, analogous to force. Applications include the gyrocompass, control moment gyroscope, inertial systems, reaction wheels, flying discs or Frisbees. In general, conservation does limit the motion of a system. In quantum mechanics, angular momentum is an operator with quantized eigenvalues, Angular momentum is subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, meaning only one component can be measured with definite precision, the other two cannot. Also, the spin of elementary particles does not correspond to literal spinning motion, Angular momentum is a vector quantity that represents the product of a bodys rotational inertia and rotational velocity about a particular axis. Angular momentum can be considered an analog of linear momentum. Thus, where momentum is proportional to mass m and linear speed v, p = m v, angular momentum is proportional to moment of inertia I. Unlike mass, which only on amount of matter, moment of inertia is also dependent on the position of the axis of rotation. Unlike linear speed, which occurs in a line, angular speed occurs about a center of rotation. Therefore, strictly speaking, L should be referred to as the angular momentum relative to that center and this simple analysis can also apply to non-circular motion if only the component of the motion which is perpendicular to the radius vector is considered. In that case, L = r m v ⊥, where v ⊥ = v sin θ is the component of the motion. It is this definition, × to which the moment of momentum refers
11.
Ecliptic
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The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere, and is the basis for the ecliptic coordinate system. It also refers to the plane of this path, which is coplanar with the orbit of Earth around the Sun, the motions as described above are simplifications. Due to the movement of Earth around the Earth–Moon center of mass, due to further perturbations by the other planets of the Solar System, the Earth–Moon barycenter wobbles slightly around a mean position in a complex fashion. The ecliptic is actually the apparent path of the Sun throughout the course of a year, because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun also takes the same length of time to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward every day, again, this is a simplification, based on a hypothetical Earth that orbits at uniform speed around the Sun. The actual speed with which Earth orbits the Sun varies slightly during the year, for example, the Sun is north of the celestial equator for about 185 days of each year, and south of it for about 180 days. The variation of orbital speed accounts for part of the equation of time, if the equator is projected outward to the celestial sphere, forming the celestial equator, it crosses the ecliptic at two points known as the equinoxes. The Sun, in its apparent motion along the ecliptic, crosses the equator at these points, one from south to north. The crossing from south to north is known as the equinox, also known as the first point of Aries. The crossing from north to south is the equinox or descending node. Likewise, the ecliptic itself is not fixed, the gravitational perturbations of the other bodies of the Solar System cause a much smaller motion of the plane of Earths orbit, and hence of the ecliptic, known as planetary precession. The combined action of two motions is called general precession, and changes the position of the equinoxes by about 50 arc seconds per year. Once again, this is a simplification, periodic motions of the Moon and apparent periodic motions of the Sun cause short-term small-amplitude periodic oscillations of Earths axis, and hence the celestial equator, known as nutation. Obliquity of the ecliptic is the used by astronomers for the inclination of Earths equator with respect to the ecliptic. It is about 23. 4° and is currently decreasing 0.013 degrees per hundred years due to planetary perturbations, the angular value of the obliquity is found by observation of the motions of Earth and other planets over many years. From 1984, the Jet Propulsion Laboratorys DE series of computer-generated ephemerides took over as the ephemeris of the Astronomical Almanac. Obliquity based on DE200, which analyzed observations from 1911 to 1979, was calculated, jPLs fundamental ephemerides have been continually updated. J. Laskar computed an expression to order T10 good to 0″. 04/1000 years over 10,000 years, all of these expressions are for the mean obliquity, that is, without the nutation of the equator included
12.
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
