The Kuiper Belt is a ring of space rocks surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, around the orbit of Pluto and beyond. The formation is similar to the inner asteroid belt, and is one of the major sources for the comets that pass through our solar system. The Belt contains a large number of significant objects,... |
6 November 2009
08:51 GMT |
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The concept of solar sails, devices that would rely on solar winds and photons to power up spacecraft traveling through the solar system and beyond, has been around for quite some time now. Although some of the materials theoretically needed for them have been developed, and even a few not-that-successful attempts ha... |
19 August 2009
02:21 GMT |
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The two objects in the Kuiper Belt (the icy ring at the edge of our solar system, 6 billion km away from Earth) share a common name, 2001 QW322. They orbit each other in what appears to be the faintest reciprocal influence of two celestial bodies in our system, and they have been doing so for billions of years, whic... |
21 October 2008
07:47 GMT |
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The dwarf planet of Haumea, the third largest in the Kuiper Belt after Pluto and Eris, was discovered a few days after the Christmas of 2004, on December 28th, by Mike Brown, a Caltech scientist. Its observed characteristics indicate that it has a violent past, marked by a massive collision with a similar object bill... |
16 October 2008
08:39 GMT |
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The smallest of the Kuiper Belt Objects remain elusive for all the searches attempted over the past few years. Finding some would help explain a number of theories related to the solar system's formation and evolution. Since the icy ring of frozen bodies known as the Kuiper Belt was discovered beyond Neptun... |
4 October 2008
07:29 GMT |
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There are numerous comets orbiting through the inner solar system, but where this huge amount of objects comes from is largely unknown. Now astronomers have suggested that many short orbit comets could in fact be fragments of much larger objects that break up into multiple pieces as they enter the inner solar system ... |
28 July 2008
06:05 GMT |
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2005 FY9, a dwarf planet roughly half the size of Pluto and falling into the newly created class of objects currently known as 'plutoids', was recently named by the International Astronomical Union 'Makemake', according to the suggestion made by its discoverer Mike Brown of Caltech. 'Makemake... |
15 July 2008
02:52 GMT |
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The first of these objects, 2003 EL61, was discovered back in 2005 and appears to be a strange shaped body rotating rapidly and chaotically about its axis. The fact that other five objects were found in the same orbit in 2007 suggests that all may have originated from a larger object destroyed during a collision abou... |
23 April 2008
02:49 GMT |
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There is another planet beyond the orbit of Neptune, and scientists say it's not Pluto. Ever wondered what the X in the name stands for? The X is the equivalent for unknown, opposed to the general believe that it represents the Roman numeral for 10. And another thing... how do you discover a planet that has neve... |
16 January 2008
06:57 GMT |
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Now, we consider that the outer solar system lies somewhere beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune, meaning for example the Kuiper belt, thought to be the source of the short-period orbit comets, and the Oort cloud lying more than one light year away from the Sun, which could probably be the location where long-peri... |
3 January 2008
05:39 GMT |
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The Sun used to be considered the biggest object in the solar system. Though not as massive and compact as the star, comet Holmes currently has a volume larger than that of the Sun. The second outburst in history took place on the 24th of October this year, when the comet expanded and multiplied its brightness about ... |
15 November 2007
05:31 GMT |
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