KBO encounters |
KBO encounters |
Aug 2 2008, 12:53 PM
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#1
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 6 Joined: 1-August 08 Member No.: 4280 |
Hi,
I’m regular follower of NH and I’m also interested in the 2nd leg of the mission, i.e the 2016+ KBOs encounters. Does anyone know when operations about this leg (starting with searching objects of interest with HST or some other earth-based means, I suppose) are expected to begin ? |
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May 21 2011, 01:48 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 204 Joined: 29-June 05 Member No.: 421 |
Are Kuiper belt objects distributed like a belt, or more like a shell?
When I find close asteroids (the ones with three closely spaced bright marks), they always seem to move approximately horizontally across the image. But when I find distant bright blobs with a corresponding dark blob, they seem just as likely to be separated in any direction. Or is it just that there are so many other sources of variable brightness besides KBO's, that most of the time when there are a bright blob seeming paired with a dark one it is just a chance occurrence. Like two out-of-sync variable stars near each other from our viewpoint? |
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May 21 2011, 03:19 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 717 Joined: 3-December 04 From: Boulder, Colorado, USA Member No.: 117 |
Most KBOs are in a flat disk, like the asteroids (though there are dramatic exceptions), and here we're looking in the plane of the disk so most KBOs we find will be trundling along in the same direction at similar rates. That's good, because it means most are heading in the general direction of the New Horizons trajectory (though we expect only a few percent of the KBOs we find to be accessible to the spacecraft).
And yes, most point-like variable or moving objects in the frames are probably *not* KBOs - they're variable stars or sometimes even artifacts such as CCD defects, as discussed previously. That's why we need all this help in cataloging everything, so we can sort out the few objects that really are of interest to us. So thanks again! John |
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