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Makemake (other)
Makemake ( minor-planet designation: 136472 Makemake) is a dwarf planet and the largest of what is known as the classical population of Kuiper belt objects, with a diameter approximately that of Saturn's moon Iapetus, or 60% that of Pluto. It has one known satellite. Its extremely low average temperature, about , means its surface is covered with methane, ethane, and possibly nitrogen ices. Makemake shows signs of geothermal activity and thus may be capable of supporting active geology and harboring an active subsurface ocean. Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005 by a team led by Michael E. Brown, and announced on July 29, 2005. It was initially known as and later given the minor-planet number 136472. In July 2008, it was named after Makemake, a creator god in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island, under the expectation by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that it would prove to be a dwarf planet. History Discovery Makemake was discovered on March 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Makemake Symbol (bold)
Makemake ( minor-planet designation 136472 Makemake) is a dwarf planet and – depending on how they are defined – the second-largest Kuiper belt object in the classical population, with a diameter approximately 60% that of Pluto. It has one known satellite. Its extremely low average temperature, about , means its surface is covered with methane, ethane, and possibly nitrogen ices. Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005 by a team led by Michael E. Brown, and announced on July 29, 2005. It was initially known as and later given the minor-planet number 136472. In July 2008, it was named after Makemake, a creator god in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island, under the expectation by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that it would prove to be a dwarf planet. History Discovery Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005, by a team at the Palomar Observatory, led by Michael E. Brown, and was announced to the public on July 29, 2005. The team had planned to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellipsoid
An ellipsoid is a surface that may be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface; that is, a surface that may be defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables. Among quadric surfaces, an ellipsoid is characterized by either of the two following properties. Every planar cross section is either an ellipse, or is empty, or is reduced to a single point (this explains the name, meaning "ellipse-like"). It is bounded, which means that it may be enclosed in a sufficiently large sphere. An ellipsoid has three pairwise perpendicular axes of symmetry which intersect at a center of symmetry, called the center of the ellipsoid. The line segments that are delimited on the axes of symmetry by the ellipsoid are called the ''principal axes'', or simply axes of the ellipsoid. If the three axes have different lengths, the figure is a triaxial ellipsoi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Methane
Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Earth makes it an economically attractive fuel, although capturing and storing it poses technical challenges due to its gaseous state under normal conditions for temperature and pressure. Naturally occurring methane is found both below ground and under the seafloor and is formed by both geological and biological processes. The largest reservoir of methane is under the seafloor in the form of methane clathrates. When methane reaches the surface and the atmosphere, it is known as atmospheric methane. The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, and it accounts for 20% of the total radiative forcing from all of the long-lived and globally mixed greenhouse gases. It has also been detected on other pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is slightly less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Compared to Earth's moon, Pluto has only one sixth its mass and one third its volume. Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance (). Pluto's eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding. Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iapetus (moon)
Iapetus () is a moon of Saturn. It is the 24th of Saturn’s 83 known moons. With an estimated diameter of 1,469 km, it is the third-largest moon of Saturn and the eleventh-largest in the Solar System. Named after the Titan Iapetus, the moon was discovered in 1671 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. A relatively low-density body made up mostly of ice, Iapetus is home to several distinctive and unusual features, such as a striking difference in coloration between its leading hemisphere, which is dark, and its trailing hemisphere, which is bright, as well as a massive equatorial ridge running three-quarters of the way around the moon. History Discovery Iapetus was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian-born French astronomer, in October 1671. He had discovered it on the western side of Saturn and tried viewing it on the eastern side some months later, but was unsuccessful. This was also the case the following year, when he was again able to observe it on the weste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minor Planet Center
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function The Minor Planet Center is the official worldwide organization in charge of collecting observational data for minor planets (such as asteroids), calculating their orbits and publishing this information via the '' Minor Planet Circulars''. Under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which is part of the Center for Astrophysics along with the Harvard College Observatory. The MPC runs a number of free online services for observers to assist them in observing minor planets and comets. The complete catalogue of minor planet orbits (sometimes referred to as the "Minor Planet Catalogue") may also be freely downloaded. In addition to astrometric data, the MPC colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Buie
Marc William Buie (; born 1958) is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events. Early life and education Buie grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and received his B.Sc. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1980. He then switched fields and earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1984. Buie was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he played a key role in the planning and scheduling of the first planetary observations ever made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Buie joined the staff at Lowell Observatory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Jewitt
David Clifford Jewitt (born 1958) is a British-American astronomer who studies the Solar System, especially its minor bodies. He is based at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, the Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. He is best known for being the first person (along with Jane Luu) to discover a body beyond Pluto and Charon in the Kuiper belt. Early life Jewitt was born in London, England in 1958.http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/bio.pdf His mother was a telephonist, and his father worked on an assembly line making industrial steel cutters. The family lived with Jewitt's grandmother in a social housing project in the north London suburb of Tottenham. Jewitt's interest in astronomy was kindled in 1965, when he chanced to see som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper belt () is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region. The Kuiper belt was named after Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, although he did not predict its existence. In 1992, minor planet (15760 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Kuiper Belt Object
A classical Kuiper belt object, also called a cubewano ( "QB1-o"), is a low-eccentricity Kuiper belt object (KBO) that orbits beyond Neptune and is not controlled by an orbital resonance with Neptune. Cubewanos have orbits with semi-major axes in the 40–50 AU range and, unlike Pluto, do not cross Neptune's orbit. That is, they have low- eccentricity and sometimes low-inclination orbits like the classical planets. The name "cubewano" derives from the first trans-Neptunian object (TNO) found after Pluto and Charon: 15760 Albion, which until January 2018 had only the provisional designation (15760) 1992 QB1. Similar objects found later were often called "QB1-o's", or "cubewanos", after this object, though the term "classical" is much more frequently used in the scientific literature. Objects identified as cubewanos include: * 15760 Albion (aka 1992 QB1 and gave rise to term 'Cubewano') * 136472 Makemake, the largest known cubewano and a dwarf planet * 50000 Quaoar and 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dwarf Planet
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to planetary geologists is that they may be geologically active bodies, an expectation that was borne out in 2015 by the '' Dawn'' mission to and the '' New Horizons'' mission to Pluto. Astronomers are in general agreement that at least the nine largest candidates are dwarf planets: Pluto, , , , , , , , and . Of these and the tenth-largest candidate , all but Sedna have either been visited by spacecraft (Pluto and Ceres) or have at least one known moon (Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, and Salacia), which allows their masses and thus an estimate of their densities to be determined. Mass and density in turn can be fit into geophysical models in an attempt to determine the nature of these worlds. Some astronomers includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minor-planet Designation
A formal minor-planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet (asteroid, centaur, trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet but not comet). Such designation always features a leading number (catalog or IAU number) assigned to a body once its orbital path is sufficiently secured (so-called "numbering"). The formal designation is based on the minor planet's provisional designation, which was previously assigned automatically when it had been observed for the first time. Later on, the provisional part of the formal designation may be replaced with a name (so-called "naming"). Both formal and provisional designations are overseen by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a branch of the International Astronomical Union. Currently, a number is assigned only after the orbit has been secured by four well-observed oppositions. For unusual objects, such as near-Earth asteroids, numbering might already occur after three, maybe even only two, oppositions. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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