The Five Dwarfs

What does it take?

• Definition: A celestial body

• orbiting a star

• that is massive enough to

• be rounded by its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of

• planetismals and is not a satellite.

What is the difference?A Planet:

• 1. needs to orbit around the sun. • 2. needs to have enough • gravity to pull itself into a spherical • shape. • 3. needs to have “cleared • the neighborhood” of its orbit.

This means it has to be able to take an impact or sling other objects away withits gravity.

Dwarf Planets

• Cannot get rid of the other occupiers of its orbital space. Mostly because they are too small to use gravity to do it. And, the other occupiers are of like size.

• That is how Pluto was kicked out as a • Planet.

• It meets the first two but not the third• requirement of being a planet.

International Astronomers Union

Finalized definition of a planet is 2006.

Once this was finalized the planets in our Solar System went down to 8.

But: the GOOD news is there are at LEAST 5, maybe more Dwarfs out there.

http://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/

A note about Asteroid Belt/Kuiper Belt

• These are similar, but the Kuiper Belt is bigger and farther from the sun.

• The Asteroid Belt is between Mars and Jupiter. The Kuiper Belt is from the end of the planets' orbit to about 55 astronomical units from the sun. That's about 20 times as wide as the Asteroid Belt.

• So, they are both areas of space with lots of asteroids, but the Kuiper Belt is bigger and farther away from the Sun and the Earth.

Asteroid Belt

website: http://space-facts.com/asteroid-belt/

Asteroid Belt InfoWhat is the asteroid belt?The vast majority of asteroids in the solar system are found in a region of the solar system out beyond Mars. They form the Asteroid Belt. Others orbit in near-Earth space and a few migrate or are thrown out to the outer solar system by gravitational interactions. The four largest asteroids in the belt are Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. They contain half the mass of the entire belt. The rest of the mass is contained in countless smaller bodies. There was a theory once that if you combined all the asteroids they would make up the missing “Fifth” rocky planet. Planetary scientists estimate that if you could put all that material together that exists there today, it would make a tiny world smaller than Earth’s moon.Where is the asteroid belt located?The Asteroid Belt is located in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. The belt is about 1 AU thick. The average distance between objects in the Asteroid Belt is quite large. If you could stand on an asteroid and look around, the next one would be too far away to see very well.

Asteroid Belt Facts

Asteroid MiningThe solar system contains many different types of asteroids, grouped by the minerals they contain. The abundances of precious metals such as nickel, iron, and titanium (to name a few), and water make asteroids an attractive target for mining operations when humans decide to expand their presence through interplanetary space. For example, water from asteroids could serve colonies in space, while the minerals and metals would be used to build habitats and grow food for future space colony inhabitants. Beginning 2013, companies interested in asteroid mining began announcing their plans for future operations on distant planetoids. In addition, NASA is looking into similar missions. The biggest obstacles to asteroid mining are the need to develop affordable spaceflight technology that would allow humans to get to the asteroids of interest.Facts about the Asteroid BeltWhat other fascinating things do we know about the Asteroid Belt?Asteroid Belt objects are made of rock and stone. Some are solid objects, while others are orbiting “rubble piles”.The Asteroid Belt contains billions and billions of asteroids.

Some asteroids in the Belt are quite large, but most range in size down to pebbles.Ceres is designated as a dwarf planet, the largest one in the inner solar system.We know of at least 7,000 asteroids.The Asteroid Belt may contain many objects, but they are spread out over a huge area of space. This has allowed spacecraft to move through this region without hitting anything.Asteroids get their names from suggestions by their discoverers and are also given a number.The formation of Jupiter disrupted the formation of any worlds in the Asteroid Belt region by scattering

asteroids away. This caused them to collide and break into smaller pieces.Gravitational influences can move asteroids out of the Belt.The Asteroid Belt is often referred to as the “Main Belt” to distinguish it from other groups of asteroids such as the Lagrangians and Centaurs.

Kuiper Belt

website: http://space-facts.com/kuiper-belt/

Kuiper Belt FactsKuiper Belt LocationThe Kuiper Belt extends from roughly the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU out to about 55 astronomical units from the Sun. The main body of this belt covers much of this region, ranging from nearly 40 AU to 48 AU. It is thick in most places and astronomers have described it as being more torus-shaped than a belt would be. Other regions of the Kuiper Belt include a disk of scattered objects that are part of a population of worlds called Trans-Neptunian Objects.Facts about the Kuiper BeltThe Kuiper Belt could contain hundreds of thousands of icy bodies that range in size from small chunks of ice to worldlets larger than 100 kilometers across.Astronomers have tracked most short-period comets from their origins in the Kuiper Belt. These are comets with orbital periods of 200 years or less.There could be more than a trillion comet nuclei in the main body of the Kuiper Belt.The largest Kuiper Belt Objects are Pluto, Quaoar, Makemake, Haumea, Ixion, and Varuna. These are often also referred to as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs).The first mission to the Kuiper Belt and beyond will fly by Pluto in July 2015. It’s called New Horizons and will survey Pluto, Charon and the other moons before heading out to study other Kuiper Belt Objects in the future.Astronomers have found structures similar to our Kuiper Belt around at least nine other stars. Hubble Space Telescope imaged discs around the stars HD 138664 in the constellation Lupus, and HD 53143 in the constellation Carina.The ices in the Kuiper Belt date back to the formation of the solar system. They contain clues to conditions in the early solar nebula.

Pluto

https://ragingfluff.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/pluto-is-a-planet-again-maybe/

http://snowbrains.com/pluto-why-its-no-longer-a-planet/

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/03/pluto-planet-again/

Lets take a moment and have a debate.

Pluto Statistics

1. Known as a Plutoid. This is a post Neptuneobject.

Website: http://space-facts.com/pluto/

More Pluto Stats

A Plutoid is a dwarf planet that

is farther out in space than Neptune.

2. Pluto is in the Kuiper Belt.

The Kuiper Belt is a region of

thousands of icy objects.

3. Sidereal Year: 248 Earth Years

More Pluto Stats

•

• Sidereal Day: 6.5 Earth Days

• 4. Icy, cold place.

• 5. Five? Moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx, and Cerberus.

• 6. Gravity: 1/15 of earth = .65 m/s2

New Horizons Space Craft

• A spacecraft which will reach

• Pluto on July 14, 2015.

• Basically on the doorstep now.

Ceres

From DawnSpacecraft, best shot from 2014.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Dwa_Ceres

Located in Asteroid belt, closer than Pluto.Website: http://space-facts.com/ceres/

Haumea

• Very fast rotation which makes it elongated in shape.

• Complete rotation every 4 hours.

• Plutoid and in the Kuiper Belt

• Has two moons: Hi’iaka and Namaka

• Third Planet out.

Website: http://space-facts.com/haumea/

Haumea

Earth – Haumeasize

Makemake

• A Plutoid: (Remember, it is out• past Neptune.

• Takes 310 years to get around the sun.

• It is in the Kuiper Belt.

• 4th dwarf. Was nick-named Easterbunnyuntil it got its official name.

MakeMake

• Visually, it is the second brightest object in the Kuiper Belt after Pluto.

• The Spitzer Space Telescope has studied Makemake with its infrared capabilities, which showed the presence of methane, possibly in Makemake’s atmosphere. Its size is not precisely known, but from the Spitzer data, combined with the similarities of spectrum with Pluto, astronomers estimate a size about about1,500 km diameter. No satellites have been detected orbiting Makemake.

MakeMake Pictures

No actual pictures, only artists’ renditions.

Website: http://space-facts.com/makemake/

Eris

• Responsible for being the planet that kicked Pluto out.

• When it was first discovered it would have been a 10th planet because it was discovered before the official definition of a planet.

• A Plutoid (Trans-Neptunian)

Eris

• 27% Larger than Pluto

• Beyond the Kuiper Belt

• Call it the 10th planet because it was • discovered before any of the other

Dwarfs and after Pluto.

Orbit is very eccentric.

Website: http://space-facts.com/eris/

More Websites

• http://www.universetoday.com/117291/2015-nasas-year-of-the-dwarf-planet/

• http://space-facts.com/dwarf-planets/

Web sites

• http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/the-dwarf-planet-makemake-facts-lesson-quiz.html#lesson

• http://www.universetoday.com/116461/the-top-101-astronomical-events-to-watch-for-in-2015/#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=54a7cb489fa77903&at_ab=per-3&at_pos=3&at_tot=auto