What did New Horizons discover about the Kuiper Belt?

A recent announcement out of the 53rd American Astronomical Society Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences demonstrates that two Kuiper Belt objects that the spacecraft’s camera homed in on are actually each close binary pairs. The binary asteroids are named 2011 JY31 and 2014 OS393.

Is Voyager in Kuiper Belt?

To mark the occasion, New Horizons recently photographed the star field where one of its long-distance cousins, Voyager 1, appears from New Horizons’ unique perch in the Kuiper Belt. Never before has a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt photographed the location of an even more distant spacecraft, now in interstellar space.

What objects are in the Kuiper Belt?

There are bits of rock and ice, comets and dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Besides Pluto and a bunch of comets, other interesting Kuiper Belt Objects are Eris, Makemake and Haumea. They are dwarf planets like Pluto.

How was the Kuiper Belt made?

How was the Kuiper Belt created? Astronomers think the icy objects of the Kuiper Belt are remnants left over from the formation of the solar system. Similar to the relationship between the main asteroid belt and Jupiter, it’s a region of objects that might have come together to form a planet had Neptune not been there.

Are there any planets past the Kuiper Belt?

The Kuiper belt is home to three objects identified as dwarf planets by the IAU: Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System’s moons, such as Neptune’s Triton and Saturn’s Phoebe, may have originated in the region.

What is the Kuiper belt and why was it discovered?

Kuiper didn’t actually discover it. The Kuiper Belt is named for astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who published a scientific paper in 1951 that speculated about objects beyond Pluto. Kuiper’s work didn’t actually predict the populations of objects we observe in the region named for him, or crucially, their relationship with Neptune.

What happened to Voyager’s distance record?

That picture was part of a composite of 60 images looking back at the solar system, on Feb. 14, 1990, when Voyager was 3.75 billion miles (6.06 billion kilometers, or about 40.5 astronomical units [AU]) from Earth. Voyager 1’s cameras were turned off shortly after that portrait, leaving its distance record unchallenged for more than 27 years.

What did Voyager 2 find on Triton?

Voyager 2 found an icy and dynamic moon complete with ice volcanoes. Surface features, as well as Triton’s strange orbit, make astronomers suspect it’s actually a kidnapped Pluto. The moon is still seen as the closest stand-in we have for a world that New Horizons will finally reveal next month.

Why did NASA build the twin Voyager spacecraft?

NASA built the twin Voyager spacecraft to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that put Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune within reach at once.