Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Find out the latest thinking about our universe.
Post Reply
User avatar
bystander
Apathetic Retiree
Posts: 21571
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:06 pm
Location: Oklahoma

Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by bystander » Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:57 pm

Planetoid Pairs Reveal "A Kinder, Gentler Neptune"
Gemini Observatory | Canada France Hawaii Telescope | 2017 Apr 04
[img3="Artist’s conception of a loosely tethered binary planetoid pair like those studied by Fraser et al. in this work which led to the conclusion that Neptune’s shepherding of them to the Kuiper Belt as gradual and gentle in nature.
Credit: Gemini Observatoryy/AURA, Artwork by Joy Pollard
"]http://www.gemini.edu/images/pio/News/2 ... 2/fig1.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
"It’s a kinder, gentler Neptune," says Gemini astronomer Meg Schwamb in describing a new result that leaves little doubt about how Neptune gently swept a class of planetoid pairs into the outer Solar System.

The study focused on a type of loosely bound pairs of planetoids in the outer reaches of our Solar System that scientists say were likely shepherded by Neptune’s gravitational nudges into their current orbits in the distant Kuiper Belt.

The research team, led by Wes Fraser of Queen’s University in Belfast, UK, used data collected from the Gemini North Frederick C. Gillett Telescope and Canada-France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) both on Maunakea in Hawai‘i. The team measured the colors of peculiar new Cold Classical Kuiper Belt Object (CCKBO) pairs as part of the Colours of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (Col-OSSOS).

The objects are among a category of bodies known as "blue binaries" which are oddball pairs in the Kuiper Belt because they don’t share the very red color that distinguishes most of the other CCKBO’s surfaces. The Kuiper Belt is a huge swarm of icy small planetoids well beyond the orbit of Neptune, and left-over from the formation of our Solar System.

It is believed that the blue binaries migrated from more inward parts of the Solar System out to the present-day Kuiper Belt. It is thought that this migration occurred several billion years ago during profound changes to the orbits of the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

“The red CCKBOs are thought to have formed at the location in the outer solar system where they currently reside. The blue binaries, on the other hand, are interlopers from closer in and hiding out in the Kuiper belt today,” says Schwamb, who is also a coauthor on the study. ...

All planetesimals born near the Kuiper belt formed as binaries - Wesley C. Fraser et al
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
— Garrison Keillor

BDanielMayfield
Don't bring me down
Posts: 2524
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:24 am
AKA: Bruce
Location: East Idaho

Re: Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by BDanielMayfield » Wed Apr 05, 2017 2:29 am

Hey Ann! They're BLUE :!:
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13373
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by Ann » Wed Apr 05, 2017 3:42 am

BDanielMayfield wrote:Hey Ann! They're BLUE :!:
What..? WOW!!! But... no, sadly enough, I don't think they are really blue, just surprisingly non-red for their position in the solar system.
I haven't heard of any asteroid-sized rocky or icy body that was truly blue, and I don't think mother nature makes rocky bodies like that.
Madre del Buen Consejo Our Lady of Good Counsel in Bujedo, Spain.














On the Earth, there is a truly blue mineral called lapis lazuli, but this mineral most certainly isn't something you might just stumble on during your morning walk. For centuries, it was incredibly hard to make blue dyes, and lapis lazuli was used to make an awfully expensive blue color. Because this color was so noble and so rare, it was typically used to color the Virgin Mary's robes blue.

Ann
Color Commentator

BDanielMayfield
Don't bring me down
Posts: 2524
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:24 am
AKA: Bruce
Location: East Idaho

Re: Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by BDanielMayfield » Wed Apr 05, 2017 5:49 am

But at those cold depths far from the Sun's warmth water is a mineral of sorts. Could be the most common one out there too. Glacial ice free of air bubbles is very blue.

Bruce
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

User avatar
neufer
Vacationer at Tralfamadore
Posts: 18805
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Re: Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by neufer » Wed Apr 05, 2017 11:54 am

BDanielMayfield wrote:
But at those cold depths far from the Sun's warmth water is a mineral of sorts. Could be the most common one out there too. Glacial ice free of air bubbles is very blue.
  • Probably more a lack of red tholins than an abundance of high pressure glaciers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin#Tholins_on_Triton.2C_Pluto.2C_and_Kuiper_belt_objects wrote:
<<Tholins (after the Greek θολός (tholós) "hazy" or "muddy"; from the ancient Greek word meaning "sepia ink") are a class of heteropolymer molecules formed by solar ultraviolet irradiation of simple organic compounds such as methane or ethane, often in combination with nitrogen. Tholins do not form naturally on modern-day Earth, but they are found in great abundance on the surface of icy bodies in the outer Solar System, and as reddish aerosols in the atmosphere of outer solar system planets and moons. They usually have a reddish-brown appearance.>>
Art Neuendorffer

BDanielMayfield
Don't bring me down
Posts: 2524
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:24 am
AKA: Bruce
Location: East Idaho

Re: Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune

Post by BDanielMayfield » Wed Apr 05, 2017 12:51 pm

neufer wrote:Probably more a lack of red tholins than an abundance of high pressure glaciers.
Sure, pressures on low g worlds would never be as great as in Earthly ice fields. But low pressures, working over very long time spans might produce bubble free ice.

Bruce
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

Post Reply