Gemini/CFHT: A Kinder, Gentler Neptune
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:57 pm
Planetoid Pairs Reveal "A Kinder, Gentler Neptune"
Gemini Observatory | Canada France Hawaii Telescope | 2017 Apr 04
All planetesimals born near the Kuiper belt formed as binaries - Wesley C. Fraser et al
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."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.
Credit: Gemini Observatoryy/AURA, Artwork by Joy Pollard"]http://www.gemini.edu/images/pio/News/2 ... 2/fig1.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
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
- Nature Astronomy 1:0088 (01 Apr 2017) DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0088