Solar planetary system

Dwarf planets

Definitions (from “Pluto’s Dwarf Planet Family Could Get Bigger” by Ian O’Neill (Discovery News; 2010.04.09) – http://news.discovery.com/space/plutos-dwarf-planet-family-is-about-to-get-bigger.html)

• The 2006 IAU definition of a dwarf planet states that such a body should be massive enough to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium, it must orbit the sun, but it cannot “clear its own orbit.”
• The ‘potato-limit’: “the rule that they must be of certain brightness, dwarf planets have a minimum radius of 420 km (260 miles).”

All except Ceres are trans-Neptunians residing in the Kuipert belt.

Name	Location	Discovery details	Orbit radius	Orbital period	Size (radius)	Mass	Length of the day	Misc
Eris (= 2003 UB_313; initially called “Xena”)	Kuipert belt
Pluto	Kuipert belt	1930.02.18 by Clyde Tombaugh	it has very excentric orbit, with and					Has four satellites: Hydra: discovered by Hubble telescope in 2005. 30 to 115km diameter. Charon: discovered in 1978 by the US Naval Observatory. 1,200km diameter. Nix: discovered by Hubble telescope in 2005. 30 to 115km diameter. P4 (yet unnamed): diameter 13 to 34 km [of 8 to 21 miles]
Makemake	Kuipert belt
Haumea	Kuipert belt
Quaoar (= 2002 LM60; = 50000 Quaoar)	Kuipert belt	announced 2002.02.07 by Michael Brown and Chadwick Trujillo of Caltech						likely composition: made mostly of low-density ices mixed with rock
Sedna (= 90377 Sedna)	Kuipert belt	discovered in 2003
Ceres	asteroid belt

Sources:

• Pluto:
  • Pluto (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
  • “Hubble spies fourth moon at Pluto” by Jonathan Amos (BBC News; 2011.07.20) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14220620
• Quaoar:
  • 50000 Quaoar (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50000_Quaoar
  • Frequently Asked Questions About Quaoar – http://www.chadtrujillo.com/quaoar/
  • “images” of Quaoar – http://www.google.com/images?q=Quaoar
• Sedna:
  • 90377 Sedna (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna
  • “Sedna” by Mike Brown – http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/ – The coldest most distant place known in the solar system; possibly the first object in the long-hypothesized Oort cloud
• Mike Brown’s Dwarf planets pages:
  • “Sedna” by Mike Brown – http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/ – The coldest most distant place known in the solar system; possibly the first object in the long-hypothesized Oort cloud
  • The discovery of Eris, the largest known dwarf planet – http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/
  • A Requiem for Xena – http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/whatsaplanet/requiem.html
  • Haumea – http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/2003EL61/ – The strangest known object in the Kuiper belt: Haumea and Namaka are currently undergoing a series of mutual occultations and eclipses. Study of these events will allow us to study this system with unprecedented detail.
    2003 EL61 — now known as Haumea — is one of the strangest known objects in the solar system. It is a big across as Pluto, but shaped like a cigar. Or perhaps like a football [American-style]. Or, most accurately, a football that has too little air in it and has been stepped on. It spins end over end every 4 hours like a football that has been kicked. It appears to be made almost entirely of rock, but with a glaze of ice over the surface. It is surrounded by two tiny satellites (Hi’iaka and Namaka) and is followed in its orbit by a swarm of other small icy bodies. Everything that we know about this body appears to tell us that in its past another object slammed into it at high speed and cracked it into pieces which flew all around the outer solar system and left what we see today. Follow the story below….
  • Mike Brown’s Planets (blog and mail list) – http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/
• “Frequently Asked Questions About 2004 DW” by Chad Trujillo – http://www.chadtrujillo.com/2004dw/
• Kuiper Belt Objects – http://www.ronyerby.com/ss/Kuiper.html

Oort Cloud

a sphere one light year in radius stretching a quarter of the distance to Alpha Centauri

Potential planet: Tyche

• “Does a Massive Planet Lurk in the Outer Solar System?” by Ian O’Neill (DiscoveryNews; 2011.02.16) – http://news.discovery.com/space/a-massive-planet-lurking-in-the-outer-solar-system.html
• “Up telescope! Search begins for giant new planet” by Paul Rodgers (The Independent; 2011.02.13) – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/up-telescope-search-begins-for-giant-new-planet-2213119.html – Tyche may be bigger than Jupiter and orbit at the outer edge of the solar system
  • Mored data – http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00555/tyche3_555342a.pdf
  • The orbit of Tyche would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth’s, and 375 times farther than Pluto’s
  • Tyche will almost certainly be made up mostly of hydrogen and helium and will probably have an atmosphere much like Jupiter’s, with colourful spots and bands and clouds,
  • You’d also expect it to have moons. All the outer planets have them
  • temperature predicted to be around -73C, four or five times warmer than Pluto

---

Related here: Astronomy & Astrophysics – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/astronomy-astrophysics/ | Astronomic tables and calculators – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/astronomic-tables-and-calculators/ | Inside black holes – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/inside-black-holes/ | Physics Sites – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/physics-sites/