Strangest Kuiper Belt Objects: The Top Five

From Pluto, looking at its icy moons in the Kuiper belt (NASA)

The Kuiper belt is strange. Most of this strangeness probably comes from the fact that we are only just beginning to uncover this mysterious region of the Solar System. Unlike the Oort Cloud which (possibly) lies beyond 3 × 1012 km away (over 20,000 AU, or a whopping 0.3 light years), we can actually observe the objects inside the Kuiper belt as, compared to the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper belt is on our interplanetary doorstep.

But that doesn’t mean it’s close. The Kuiper belt exists in a region of space 30–55 AU from the Sun; this is where Pluto lives (as Pluto itself is a “Kuiper belt object”, or KBO). As astronomical techniques become more advanced however, we are able to discover more KBOs in the zoo of icy-rocky bodies that live in this region.

Having just written about an oddball pair of “highly split” KBOs, I feel compelled to list my top five favourite KBOs. Here are my favourites, as some are really funny-lookin’ and others have some serious personal issues…
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Got It! Aftermath of Asteroid 2008 TC3 Impact Spotted

The long-lasting persistent train of the 2008 TC3 re-entry on October 7th (NASA)
The long-lasting persistent train of the 2008 TC3 re-entry on October 7th (NASA)

At long last, we have visual evidence of the 2008 TC3 impact over the remote Sudanese skies. Admittedly, it’s not a video of the dazzling fireball ploughing though the upper atmosphere, before detonating with the energy of a small nuclear weapon, but it is a great picture of the smoky remnant after the explosion.

A noctilucent cloud after the launch of a Delta rocket (Flickr)
A noctilucent cloud after the launch of a Delta rocket (Flickr)

The meteorite train seen in the image above has been sheared and twisted by high altitude winds, leaving the snake-like pattern suspended in the air. The tenuous debris reflects the dawn sunlight, in a not-so-dissimilar way to the noctilucent cloud produced after a rocket launch (pictured left).

For more on today’s uncovering of the October 7th image (above), check out my Universe Today article. For more information on the first ever predicted asteroid impact, check out my collection of articles on Astroengine.com (tag: “2008 TC3”).

Tonight’s Paranormal Radio Show Postponed

Tonight for my monthly Paranormal Radio slot, Captain Jack and I will be having a discussion about the threat of asteroids and comets to the Earth. It’s not a question of if we’ll get hit by an extinction-level event, it’s a question of when…

Due to technical problems with the “voice of darkness” in the depths of Texas, tonight’s show about asteroids and interplanetary shooting galleries will have to be postponed for a couple of days. I hope it’s got nothing to do with those damn aliens or 2012 activists… Anyhow, for some reason Jack had to drive to Dallas, breaking all sorts of land-speed records, to buy a server…?!

Watch this space, I’ll update you with news as I get it…

In the mean time, check out the breadth of news items about space, politics, conspiracies, big foot and ghostly happenings at WPRT Radio…

I Stand Corrected…

Forget Planet X, a rogue comet, geomagnetic reversal and killer solar flares… this could be what the Mayans were talking about:

Oh no... (PunditKitchen.com)
Oh no... (PunditKitchen.com)

OK, I’ll stop with the humour now. Time to get on with some serious science stuff…

Update: Isn’t that a bit disrespectful of Palin to be signing her name against McCain’s head? Lol.

I really am getting back to the science now…

Source: Bad Astronomy

4 – 1 Odds That God Exists

Q: What does God, Russell Brand and the Higgs boson all have in common?
A: Unsurprisingly, not a lot.

'Eye of God' (a.k.a. the Helix Nebula), Russell Brand (with Kristin Bell on the set of the excellent movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and my Higgs boson (from the Particle Zoo)
The candidates (from left to right): 'Eye of God' (a.k.a. the Helix Nebula), Russell Brand (with Kristin Bell on the set of the excellent movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and my Higgs boson (from the Particle Zoo)

OK, so it’s been a “stupid news day” today. First I find out that 52% of voters in the great state of California believe that same-sex marriage is a bad thing, voting in the draconian Proposition 8. And then I read that a UK betting company has taken the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) search for the “God particle” literally.

So, that’s why The Eye of God (Helix Nebula as taken by Hubble) and my Higgs particle plushie are in the picture above… but where does Russell Brand and Kristin Bell come into it? Actually, there’s no reason for Bell to be in the picture at all (apart from being the first ever bikini-wearing actress to grace pages of Astroengine – don’t get used to it!), but it appears that Brand has some “god-like” qualities himself, coming a close second to old Higgsy…

Hold on to your muon detectors, this is about to get silly…
Continue reading “4 – 1 Odds That God Exists”

Carnival of Space Week 78 – Simostronomy

The Carnival of Space #78
The Carnival of Space #78

This week’s CoS has just been posted by Mike Simonsen at Simostronomy. Mike is a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and Astroengine.com is part of the AAVSO Writers Bureau – a great resource for astronomers and a very interesting organization for anyone with an interest in all things variable…

So, Mike kicks us off with the 78th Carnival, with a clutch of dazzling space blog articles from across the web. For my part, I submitted the rather entertaining story about The Hills girls trying to grasp what the LHC is all about (I don’t think they’ll be mentioning particle accelerators again any time soon!). It makes for a great read, so go and check it out!

Pinhole Camera Solargraphy

The Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, a single 6-month exposure solargraph (© Justin Quinnell)
The Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, a single 6-month exposure solargraph (© Justin Quinnell)

Armed with the most basic photography device and plenty of time, Justin Quinnell has captured some of the most unique and entrancing views of the Sun over my hometown of Bristol. When I first saw this image, the iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge instantly jumped out at me. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but after getting engrossed in Justin’s website all about pinhole photography, I soon realised this was a six-month exposure, capturing the Sun’s motion from winter solstice (December 21st, 2007) to summer solstice (June 19th, 2008)…
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Meet Antipholus and Antipholus, a Very Odd Kuiper Belt Couple

2001 QW322 is a highly split Kuiper Belt pair, orbiting eachother at a distance of 125,000 km

The highly-split Kuiper Belt pair 2001 QW322 (CFEPS)

The Kuiper Belt is an eerie, mysterious and cold region of the Solar System. In it, there are billions of small pieces of rocks with lots of fancy names. As a general designation, all objects in the Kuiper belt are called “Kuiper-belt objects” (KBO’s for short). As the Kuiper belt is located in a region just beyond Neptune, they may also be known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNO’s). Inside the Kuiper belt, we have Pluto-like objects known as “Plutoids”, classical KBO’s called “Cubewanos” (the largest being the recently discovered Makemake) and a whole host of other objects such as icy objects soon to become the next generation of periodic comets.

We are only scraping the surface, finding only a small portion of KBOs. We know of a thousand, but astronomers believe there may be as many as 70,000 measuring over 100km in diameter, plus countless other smaller objects.

Therefore, it is not very surprising that some rather strange KBOs exist, and possibly the oddest one has just been observed. From the same team that discovered KBO 2008 KV42 — a piece of rock orbiting the wrong way in a one-way Solar System — a binary Kuiper belt object has been found with a huge orbit…
Continue reading “Meet Antipholus and Antipholus, a Very Odd Kuiper Belt Couple”

Space Lifestyle Magazine #5, Fall Edition: SpaceX Article

The Fall Edition of Space Lifestyle Magazine has just been issued. For my first article in the electronic magazine, I took a trip to the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) headquarters in Hawthorn, near LA to have a tour around the site. With a special thanks to Diane Murphy, SpaceX Vice-President of Marketing and Communications, I fulfilled every space geek’s dream to see Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets being built, plus being within touching distance of the Dragon module (to undergo space tests in 2009). For me, the most significant moment was to see one of SpaceX’s complete Merlin-1C engines sitting on the rocket workshop floor, an amazing piece of engineering.

In this quarter’s edition of SLM, my Universe Today colleague Nancy Atkinson (Editor-in-Chief of the magazine), takes an in-depth look into the space policies of both Presidential Candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain (although we now know how that turned out!), and my SLM co-writer Katie Kline gives a rundown of what’s new and exciting in the world of space travel. It is an inspiring magazine with lots more articles and columns throughout its 70 pages…

Space Lifestyle Magazine is a free publication by New Forks Media, headed by Publisher David Bullock.