resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named
From the time Clyde W. Tombaugh first discovered Pluto in 1930, it was viewed as an oddball planet leading up to its reclassification in 2006. For decades, Pluto was once used as a benchmark for the outer reach and size of our solar system. In recent years, new discoveries of celestial bodies within the vicinity of Pluto’s orbit have challenged its planetary status. The debate over Pluto’s classification was discussed throughout several media and news articles, leading to serious controversy amongst
including (Planets, Moons, Stars, Galaxies, Nebula, The Universe, a Solar System, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, planetesimals, Trans-Neptunian Objects, Comets, Asteroid, a Meteor) including (Meteoroid and Meteorite). Planets: A planet is mass that is or almost round, that orbits around the sun. It is not a satellite or a moon that orbits another object, it’s the object that gets orbited.There are eight planets that orbit the sun. These planets have formed from smaller rock like matter called planetesimals
surrounding area clear of any other celestial bodies so that it is the sole occupant of its orbital region. In other words, there are no other objects besides its satellites that are affected by its gravitational pull. Pluto does not fit under this category because it shares an orbital space with objects in the Kuiper belt such as plutinos, which are trans-Neptunian bodies that orbit the Sun at the same rate as Pluto. However, this demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet wasn’t too surprising
journey through space. Comets, asteroids, and meteors are only a few objects that orbit through space and in our solar system. As a result, these various space rocks fly throughout our solar system, creating a bunch of chemistry. Comets, asteroids, and meteors are commonly put together in a group because they are all basically the same thing. One thing that comets, asteroids, and meteors all have in common is that they are rocky objects that orbit the sun. A lot of these space rocks originated from the
no longer believed that there is a tenth planet. Since it’s discovery, the legitimacy of Pluto as actually being a planet, has long been debated. The numerous irregularities found when studying Pluto, coupled with its miniscule size has made it the object of controversy. For a while it was believed that Pluto could have possibly been another moon of the planet Neptune. This was often believed due to similarities between Pluto and the Neptune moon Triton. Triton and Pluto have similar surface and atmospheric
for an object to be classified as a planet, it must embody three characteristics. It must be in orbit around a star (thus removing the larger satellites from contention), it must be too small to generate heat by nuclear fusion (so dwarf stars are excluded) and it must be massive enough to have collapsed to a more or less spherical shape (which excludes comets, and most of the asteroids). These criteria would admit a few of the larger asteroids and probably some of the Kuiper belt objects as well