The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: Ghost Bear on September 01, 2016, 12:05:06 am
-
Pluto Probe Spots Distant Dwarf Planet Quaoar (http://www.space.com/33921-dwarf-planet-quaoar-new-horizons-photos.html)
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has photographed a distant dwarf planet cruising through the dark depths of the outer solar system.
New Horizons captured images of the mysterious, 690-mile-wide (1,110 kilometers) Quaoar at four different times on July 13 and July 14 — exactly one year after the probe's historic July 14, 2015, flyby of Pluto.
New Horizons was 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion km) from Quaoar when it took the photos with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera, so the dwarf planet is not sharply resolved. But even such fuzzy views have scientific value, NASA officials said.
(snip)
Quaoar (pronounced kwa-whar) was discovered in 2002 and has not officially been designated a dwarf planet, but it almost certainly qualifies, researchers have said. Dwarf planets need to be massive enough to be shaped into a sphere by their own gravity; with a diameter of 690 miles, Quaoar is larger than the officially recognized dwarf planet Ceres.
Quaoar lies an average of 43 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and completes one lap around the star every 286 Earth years. (One AU is the average distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.) The object has one known moon.
(snip)
As the Quaoar observations show, New Horizons' work did not end with the Pluto encounter. On Jan. 1, 2019, the probe will fly by an object called 2014 MU69, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto.
(snip)
More, including photos, at the link: http://www.space.com/33921-dwarf-planet-quaoar-new-horizons-photos.html (http://www.space.com/33921-dwarf-planet-quaoar-new-horizons-photos.html)
-
Sounds like somebody named that poor planet in a fit of drunken celebration.
-
Its cold out there.
-
Those probes run on Energizer
-
Its cold out there.
Sounds like the opening to the Red Dwarf theme song.
But yes, it's mighty cold out there. But oh how lucky our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be to travel among the stars.
-
Oh I googled the name "Quaoar".
It means "creation force" by the Native American Tonga tribe from the Los Angeles basin in Southern California.
(Google)
For @Oceander
-
Oh I googled the name "Quaoar".
It means "creation force" by the Native American Tonga tribe from the Los Angeles basin in Southern California.
(Google)
For @Oceander
Thanks, @Freya, you saved me a few keystrokes!
-
Its cold out there.
Dark, too.