In addition to the reality of the beautiful blue giant planet Neptune - the most distant large planet from the Sun - there is a mysterious and strange region that we are just beginning to explore. In this remote, dark and frigid region, far from the light and heat of the sun, there are many charming and mystifying objects. From this remote region, the Sun appears just like a big star in a dark sky; not a loud and bright golden ball that greets our Earth every morning.
Once, quite recently, schools taught that Pluto was the furthest planet from the Sun — not Neptune. However, this beloved little world, in which a cartoon dog was named after him, was recently evicted from the basic status of the planet and is now classified as a “dwarf planet.” Why did this happen? Alas, poor Pluto!
The demobilized little world, which is Pluto, was discovered in the same year when Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto was created, and the puppy was named after what was then considered the main planet. American astronomer Clyde Tombog discovered Pluto in 1930, and a small ice object, clothed in eternal darkness, was properly named after the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto’s best moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by James Christie, and is sometimes considered a piece of Pluto itself, which may have broken off as a result of the gap between Pluto and another large object. When Pluto was still classified as a planet, the Pluto / Charon system was considered the “double planet” of many astronomers. This is because Charon is about half the size of Pluto, making it more proportional to its “planet” than any other moon in our solar system. The second runner-up is our own Earth / Moon system. Earth's moon accounts for about 27% of the size of the Earth. All other moons that surround the planets of our solar system are significantly smaller than their host planet.
On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) struck Pluto from the pantheon of full-fledged planets, reclassifying it as a member of the newly created category of small worlds, called "dwarf planets". When Pluto was first discovered in 1930, astronomers believed that it was much larger than it, and also very alone, where it swirls in cold darkness outside the realm of planets. Now astronomers know that Pluto is much smaller than originally proposed, and not the only one where it lives in the outer borders of our solar system.
The downfall of poor Pluto MAC occurred as a result of the discovery of a huge number of diverse, mostly icy objects that surrounded the Sun from an even greater distance than the most distant Pluto - in particular, the world called "Eris", which appeared to be larger than Pluto during his discoveries, but now considered about the same. In fact, Pluto and Eris are now considered “twins” circling around our Sun in a remote region called the Kuiper Belt.
Astronomers divide our solar system into segments according to their distance from the sun, as measured in astronomical units (AU). One AC is equal to the average distance of the Earth from the Sun, which is 150 million kilometers, or 93 million miles. The innermost segment of the solar system is our home, in which the terrestrial (rocky) planets are located: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and it extends to about 2 AC. The asteroid belt is the next (from 2 to 4 AU), and it is located behind Mars, but closer to the Sun than the largest planet of our Solar System, the gas giant Jupiter. After the asteroid belt, the outer giant planets dominate our Sun family in the orbit of Neptune (Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, Uranus and Neptune are smaller, but still gigantic, ice giants with thick gas atmosphere). The region of the giant planets extends from 5 to 30 AU.
Further, the mysterious outer boundaries of our solar system are hidden; his twilight zone is veiled in a fascinating, eternal darkness, where Pluto, Charon, Eris and their charming ice circle are mysteriously located in a vast kingdom, far from the blinding light and loving love of the golden heat of their parental Star. In this remote region, astronomers find it almost impossible to find dull, elusive worlds. The brightness of an object falls as the square of its distance. Here, the same object, observed twice the distance from our planet, will be four times dimmer. This distant, dark and frozen kingdom can be divided into the “trans-Neptunian” region of our solar system, the “Kuiper belt” (35-47 AU) and the “scattered disk” (from 35 to more than 100 AU). In addition, this can be hidden Oort cloud ”, a hypothetical shell of an icy proto-cosmet, freely circling the sun, stretching halfway to the nearest star.
For three quarters of a century, astronomers thought that Pluto was left alone, where it lived in the distant dark outskirts of our solar system beyond Neptune. However, all this changed in 1992, with the opening of the first Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), and then with the discovery of many larger objects in this region, especially Eris.
MAS was forced to come up with a new definition of "planet." The new definition stated that the “planet” is an object that revolves around the sun, not being some other object moon, large enough to be spherical in its gravity (but not so massive that it is capable of nuclear fusion, like a star ), and “cleared its environs” from most other orbital objects.
Because it was finally realized that Pluto is not a systematic object where it whirls, but instead actually shares orbital space with many other worlds in the Kuiper belt - areas of icy objects outside Neptune - it was ousted from the main IAU.
Pluto has an elliptical orbit that is not in the same plane as the eight major planets of our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). On average, this remote dwarf planet revolves around our Star at a distance of 5.87 billion kilometers (3.65 billion miles). It takes 248 Earth years to complete a single orbit.
Because Pluto is so far from the light and heat of our Sun, it is one of the most frigid worlds in the solar system with surface temperatures of about minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 225 degrees Celsius).
In addition to Charon, Pluto has four other, much smaller satellites. Currently, astronomers believe that Pluto is about 70 percent of rock and 30 percent of ice is predominantly nitrogen. The dwarf planet also has a very thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, which reaches about 3000 kilometers (1860 miles) into space. When a dwarf planet rotates closer to our Sun, it is surrounded by an ethereal atmosphere, but when it moves to a more distant, colder region of its orbit, this atmosphere freezes and then falls on its surface like snow, giving the world a sparkling pink glaze of mostly nitrogenous ice
Astronomers will learn more about this beloved little world, starting in July 2015, when the New Horizons probe reaches this remote region of our solar system. This will be the first time that a spacecraft has come to explore this very remote, mysterious object, where it lives with others of its kind in the outer limits.
Caltech Californian astronomer Dr. Michael Brown led the team that discovered Eris in 2005. Eris is considered one of the brightest worlds in our solar system with a diameter of about 1,445 miles, which is equivalent to the diameter of Pluto, which is believed to have a diameter from 1,429 to 1,491 miles across. Since Eris is smaller than originally thought, its surface is much brighter than previously thought. This is due to the fact that the number of detected light astronomers arose from a more rigid than the intended surface area.
The new study, suggesting that Eris is less than estimated, was the author of Dr. Bruno Sicardi and his collections. Dr. Sicardi is a planetary scientist from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie and the Observatory in Paris, France. When Eris accidentally passed in front of a background star just recently, she gave astronomers the clearest look at her, as she was first noticed by Dr. Brown and his team. The new analysis was published in October 2011 in the British journal Nature. The authors believe that the brightness of Eris is the result of a layer of a millimeter layer of methane and nitrogen that covers its surface. These frosts, in their opinion, were probably once an atmosphere, about 10,000 times thinner than Pluto. This very thin atmosphere froze on the surface, as a result of the unusually low temperatures that Eris experienced as she moved farther and farther from our Sun in her 557-year orbit. Despite its brilliance, scientists believe that the surface of Eris should have been overshadowed by heavy rainfall of micrometeorites, as well as by numerous impacts from cosmic rays.
Although the size of the Eris was probably roughly fixed, it is not known whether it is actually smaller or larger than Pluto. This is due to the fact that the size of Pluto is not precisely defined.
In this distant, dark and cold region there are many other temptingly mysterious frozen "eccentrics". For example, Haumea, discovered by Dr. Brown’s team at the end of 2004, is easily one of the most bizarre objects in our solar system. Haumea is approximately 1931 km (1200 miles), which makes it almost as wide as Pluto. However, Haumeia is one third as massive as Pluto, because it is not round. Instead, Haumea takes the form of intense football. This strange inhabitant of the Kuiper belt, which restlessly twists our Star in orbit, which is only slightly farther from Pluto, is one of the fastest rotating bodies in our Solar System, completing one full rotation in less than four hours. Astronomers have found that about three-quarters of Jaumei’s bright, cold surface is covered with crystalline water ice — much like the familiar ice that we find in our home freezers. However, a source of energy is needed to maintain this homemade type of highly organized ice, and some astronomers have suggested that this energy requirement may arise from radioactive elements hidden deep inside Haumea, enhanced by tidal heating created by gravitational attraction, that this myrtle and his the two moons (Hi-iaka and Namaka) have each other.
Makemake is another weird little world circling in the outer edges of our solar system. Found in 2005 by Dr. Brown’s team, the exact size of the Makemake remains uncertain, but the best current estimate makes it about 75% the size of Pluto. This makes it the third largest currently known dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt after the two-dimensional worlds of Pluto and Eris. Makemake completes its long orbital journey around our Star every 310 years and only slightly further than Pluto, at an average distance of 6.85 billion kilometers (4.26 billion miles) and displays a reddish hue in the spectrum of visible light. Astronomers believe that its surface is covered with a brilliant frost of frozen methane. This remote and mysterious world does not know satellites.
Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of distant and still undiscovered dwarf planets surround our sun in the cold outer borders of our solar system.
Billions of years ago, cryovalcanes displaced soft water ice by more than 50 percent of the surface of a distant dwarf planet, affectionately dubbed "Snow White" - or less poetically 2007 OR10. In cases of cryovalvanism or icy volcanism, soft ice consisting of such volatile substances as water, methane or ammonia is replaced by fiery lava, which we are familiar with on our own planet. Cryovolcanism is also found on other bodies of the outer solar system, such as Enceladus, a small ice moon orbiting the planet Saturn.
Snow White, which was discovered in 2007 as part of a doctoral thesis by Dr. Brown, then Ph.D. student, Dr. Meg Schwamb, twists our Star in a remote Kuiper belt and is about half the size of Pluto. This makes the White Snow Fifth largest known dwarf planet in our solar system. During his discovery, Dr. Brown believed that this icy little world was a big piece of Haumea that broke and went its own way. Dr. Brown called the strange little world "Snow White" in honor of what was then considered to be its white color.
However, subsequent studies of the object showed that Snow White is pink-red. In fact, this is one of the reddest bodies in our solar system. Some astronomers are now suggesting that this red painted dwarf planet can also be covered with a methane-frost film, a lingering relic of the ancient atmosphere, which usually swells into interplanetary space.
Snow White is not the only red object in the remote Kuiper belt. For example, Kwaaar, a small dwarf planet spinning around the Kuiper belt, is also pink-red. Quaoar was discovered in February 2007 by the team of Dr. Brown.
For a long time, astronomers have mistakenly believed that Snow White, though relatively large, was unremarkable - just one of several hundred potential dwarf dwarfs who float around hundreds of thousands of related worlds in the Kuiper belt.
In October 2011, Dr. Brown told a press conference in the press that “with all these dwarf planets, something interesting about them, they always tell us something.
In 2010, Dr. Brown, Adam Burgasser and Wesley Fraser used the new instrument with the Magellan Baade 6.5-meter telescope in Chile to get a better view of Snow White. Snow White was pretty red, as expected by this time, but the big surprise was that it was covered with water ice. Dr. Brown went on to explain that "water ice is not red." Ice is very common in the cold outer parts of our solar system, but it is almost always white.
According to Dr. Brown, “this combination is red and water says to me methane.” We are mainly looking at Snow White's last breath, losing its atmosphere, Little time is left. ” Over time, irradiation from space turns methane, consisting of one carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms, into long hydrocarbon chains that look red. Like a light whisper of snow, freezing on the streets at winter twilight, the irradiated methane can cling to the snow-white surface, making it look pink and red.
The outermost region of our solar system still remains a mysterious kingdom, inhabited by a large number of strange objects, large and small. What bold new worlds are waiting to be found in this cold place, clothed with eternal darkness?
