What Is a Planet?hosting.astro.cornell.edu/~matthewt/Pluto/TiscarenoPluto.pdfPluto’s History...
Transcript of What Is a Planet?hosting.astro.cornell.edu/~matthewt/Pluto/TiscarenoPluto.pdfPluto’s History...
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What Is a Planet?Pluto and Its Place in the Solar System
Dr. Matthew Tiscareno, Cornell University
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What’s in the Solar System?
• Mercury• Venus• Earth• Mars• Jupiter• Saturn• Uranus• Neptune• Pluto
• Asteroids• Moons• Comets• Kuiper Belt
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Earth Is a Planet• Big• Round• Orbits the
Sun• Has a moon• Made of
rock & metal• Atmosphere
& life
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Terrestrial Planets
• Closest to the Sun• Made of rock and metal
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
• Only a fewmoons
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Gas Giant Planets
• Biggestplanets
• Lots ofmoons
• Madeof gas(hydrogen,helium)
Jupiter, Saturn
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Ice Giant Planets
• Medium-size• Lots of moons• Made of gas
(hydrogen,helium) and alsoice (methane,water, ammonia)
Uranus, Neptune
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Pluto
• By far the smallest– Even 7 moons are
bigger• All other small planets
are close to Sun• Irregular orbit
What is Pluto like??
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Asteroids• More than 100,000 known• Made of rock & metal• A few are round, but
all shapes and sizes• Many have moons
1 Ceres 243 Ida & Dactyl25143 Itokawa
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Comets• Made of ice (water, etc)• Dive close to Sun, produces
“coma” and “tail”• Most appear to come from
well beyond the planets
Hale-Bopp Tempel 1Halley
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Kuiper Belt• Orbits outside of
Neptune• A belt of objects,
like Asteroid Belt• Source of many
comets
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Kuiper Belt• Made of ice• Some quite big• Many have moons
(some aretruly binary)
This is wherePluto belongs!
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Eris
• Bigger than Pluto!• Nicknamed “Xena” until official name was
approved• Forced issue of defining a planet
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Where Are These KBOs?
• Orbits are similar to Pluto’s• These really are Pluto’s brothers and sisters• Note: 2003 UB313
is the same as Eris
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What Is a Planet?
• What is a continent?– Why is Australia a continent, but Greenland is
just an island?• What is a mountain?
– How big would Connecticut Hill have to be beforewe call it a mountain?
• Main answer: It’s the word we’re used tousing, and we haven’t thought a whole lotabout exactly what it means
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What Is a Planet?
• International Astronomical Union (IAU) is theauthority on such matters
• Definition approved August 24• To be a planet, Pluto must:
– Orbit the Sun– Be round– Clear the neighborhood around its orbit
• Leaves us with 8 “planets”• If only “round” and “orbit Sun”, 12 or more
CHECK!
UH-OH!CHECK!
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How Were Planets Discovered?
• Some we’ve always known about– Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
• Uranus discovered with telescope 1781• Four asteroids discovered 1801-1807
– Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta– They were called planets!
• Fifth asteroid discovered 1845, soon many– Re-classified, no longer planets
• Neptune predicted, then discovered 1846
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Pluto’s History
• Clyde Tombaugh took pictures ofthe sky in pairs, looked for thingsthat moved
• Night after night, he blinked picsback and forth
• One day in 1930,he found Pluto!
• He was 24 yr old
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Pluto’s History
• Scientists originally thoughtthat Pluto– Was as big as Earth– Had a unique orbit beyond
Neptune• We now know that neither of
those is true• Charon discovered 1978
– We found Pluto’s small mass• First KBO discovered 1992,
now thousands known
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A Closer Look at Pluto
• 1,423 miles across– About half the size
of the U.S.A.• Made of ice, with a
rocky core• Ice is water and
methane, evennitrogen is frozen!
• Even best pics stillpretty fuzzy
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Pluto’s Moons• Charon is half as big
as Pluto– Orbit only 8x bigger– Closest thing we
know of to a“double planet”
• Both Charon and Pluto always keep thesame face towards each other– Compare to Earth’s moon– One half of Pluto never sees Charon, the other
half sees it always in the same place
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Pluto’s Moons
• Nix andHydra
• Two newmoonsdiscoveredthis year
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Pluto’s Orbit
• 248 years to orbit Sun• Elliptical (not circular)
– Sometimes is closer toSun than Neptune
– Happened 1979-1999• Inclined (out of plane)
– Never actually crossesNeptune’s orbit
• Orbits sun exactly 2xwhen Neptune orbits 3x
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New Horizons
• Launch 1/19/06• Jupiter flyby
2/28/07• Pluto flyby
July 2015• Will go on to
one or moreKBOs
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Conclusions
• Solar system is more than just the planets!• Asteroids, comets, KBOs are important• Since 1992, we have learned that many
other objects (KBOs) are similar to Pluto• Since 2005, we have learned that Pluto isn’t
even the biggest KBO (Eris)• Pluto is one of the biggest and most
interesting KBOs• Continue to study it, learn about how the
solar system works