What Is The Kuiper Belt?
16 Jun 2015, 12:00 UTC
Dr. Mike Brown is a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. He’s best known as the man who killed Pluto, thanks to his team’s discovery of Eris and other Kuiper Belt Objects. We asked him to help us explain this unusual region of our solar system.
Soon after Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh on February 18th, 1930, astronomers began to theorize that Pluto was not alone in the outer Solar System. In time, they began to postulate the existence of other objects in the region, which they would discover by 1992. In short, the existence of the Kuiper Belt – a large debris field at the edge of the Solar System – was theorized before it was ever discovered.(...)Read the rest of What Is The Kuiper Belt? (1,638 words)
© mwill for Universe Today, 2015. |
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Post tags: Eris, Haumea, kuiper belt, makemake, Neptune, New Horizons, Orcus, Pluto, Quaoar
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from OzhDr. Mike Brown is a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. He's best known as the man who killed Pluto, thanks to his team's discovery of Eris and other Kuiper Belt Objects. We asked him to help us explain this unusual region of our solar system....
