A new cluster of icy objects orbiting the sun beyond the distant Kuiper Belt has been spotted by the Subaru Telescope, working with NASAThe New Horizons mission to find new space targets to research.
“If this is confirmed, it will be a major discovery,” said Fumi Yoshida, from the University of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences and the Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology. in a statement.
Subaru, an 8-meter (26-foot) telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, has been working with New Horizons since its inception in 2006 to Plutothat spacecraft it arrived in 2015. Since then, New Horizons has been blazing a trail throughout The Kuiper beltwhich is a ring-shaped region of icy cometary bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune in places between 33 and 55 aspects of the stars (AU). The astronomical unit is equal to The world‘s average distance from daywhich is 149.6 million kilometers (93 million miles).
When Subaru began searching for objects in the Kuiper Belt in 2004 as a target for New Horizons to visit nearby or observe with its cameras at a distance after encountering Pluto, the telescope faced a problem. At that time, Pluto and outer space solar system New Horizons’ destination was in the constellation Sagittarius, which has a dense mountain core. the neck as a background, making it difficult to pick out Kuiper Belt objects from all background stars. To timeSubaru identified only 24 objects in the Kuiper Belt, all of which were too far away for New Horizons to reach or observe with its cameras after leaving Pluto. (ArrokothThe Kuiper Belt object that New Horizons visited on New Year’s Day 2019 was discovered by The Hubble Telescope.)
Related: What is the Kuiper belt?
Now, however, Pluto and that part of the solar system have moved from the far side of the Milky Way to a small planet. the night sky. With the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), Subaru has found 239 objects in the Kuiper Belt since 2020. Most of them are normal objects in the Kuiper Belt, but the destruction seems to be something very special.
“The most exciting part of the HSC was the discovery of 11 objects farther away than the known Kuiper Belt,” said Yoshida.
This new group of objects is not just an extension of the Kuiper Belt. There appears to be a gap between 55 AU and 70 AU where no objects have been detected, and then a second belt – let’s call it “Kuiper Belt 2” – between 70 and 90 AU, which is a few kilometers away. 13.5 billion. (8.4 billion kilometers) from the sun. To compare, Neptune It sits at 30 AU and New Horizons is currently 60 AU from the sun, according to NASA Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are 164.7 and 137.6 AU from the sun, respectively – outside star space.
Related: Solar system planets, alignment and structure: A basic guide
The architecture of the solar system, including asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt, was determined by the processes that formed the planets, including how young Jupiter he moved in an orderly manner, scattering the little bodies far and wide.
“I think that the discovery of distant objects and the determination of their orbits are important as a step towards understanding the history of the formation of the sun, comparing it with exoplanetary processes, and understanding the formation not a cosmic planet,” Yoshida said.
The discovery of these new physical bodies is not completely out of the question. The Student Dust Counter instrument aboard New Horizons continues to detect impacts from dust particles, although the rate of impacts should decrease as New Horizons leaves the Kuiper Belt. The continued presence of dust suggests that it is being produced by a mass of bodies far away. In addition, New Horizons observed unexplained astrophysics – when an object passes in front of and briefly blocks the light of a distant star – which may be the product of newly discovered objects , the most distant ‘Kuiper Belt 2.’
Furthermore, observations of protoplanetary disks orbiting each other starslike seen by ALMAThe Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array in Chile, clearly shows extended areas and many belts and gaps in the area beyond the Kuiper Belt in our solar system.
“For a long time our Kuiper Belt center was visible,” said lead author Wes Fraser of the National Research Council of Canada. is very small compared to many other planets, but our results suggest that the idea may arise due to observational bias. “So maybe, if this result confirmed, our Kuiper Belt is small and unusual after all compared to those around other stars.”
Since the Kuiper Belt appeared to be small, one theory was that it was the sun nebula those that made up our planetary system were also smaller than normal. The discovery of the Kuiper Belt 2 suggests that this was not the case.
“The first solar nebula was larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the process of planet formation in our solar system,” said Yoshida.
Astronomers will continue to use Subaru to track 11 objects in this new belt to better define their paths. Given they were found in a small area of spaceit is likely only the tip of the iceberg and suggests a very large population. Their discovery is further evidence that there is still much to be discovered in the extreme depths of the outer solar system, including the possibility of transit. minor planets even imaginary ones Planet Nine.
“This is an amazing discovery that reveals something unexpected, new and exciting in the far reaches of the solar system,” said Alan Stern, who is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. “This discovery would not have been possible without the world-class capabilities of the Subaru Observatory.”
The findings are set to be published in the Planetary Science Journal, and are currently available as first edition.
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