(PhysOrg.com) -- Until now, astronomers have used telescopes to find Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), moon-sized bodies, and obtain their spectra to determine what types of ices are on their surface. They have also used thermal-imaging ...
Astronomy
Jun 16, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought that the ...
Astronomy
Feb 2, 2010
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A paper recently published in Icarus presents findings about the Kuiper Belt Object 486958 Arrokoth, shedding new light on the preservation of volatile substances like carbon monoxide (CO) in such distant celestial bodies.
Astronomy
Mar 14, 2024
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103
A ring of icy rocks orbiting our sun just beyond Neptune may give us a glimpse of how Neptune—and other objects in the outskirts of our solar system—were formed.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 6, 2024
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New observations from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft hint that the Kuiper Belt—the vast, distant outer zone of our solar system populated by hundreds of thousands of icy, rocky planetary building blocks—might stretch ...
Astronomy
Feb 20, 2024
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A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt. Methane detected on their surfaces has the ...
Astronomy
Feb 15, 2024
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University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Planetary Sciences Francis Nimmo recently co-authored a Science Advances paper about the internal structure of the dwarf planet Eris.
Planetary Sciences
Nov 30, 2023
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How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown how comets could deposit ...
Astrobiology
Nov 14, 2023
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A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger ...
Astronomy
Oct 3, 2023
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A pair of astrophysicists, one with Kindai University, the other the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, both in Japan, have found possible evidence of an Earth-like planet residing in the Kuiper Belt. In their paper ...
