Our Solar System - The Kuiper belt Traditional Cache
lyonden_ut: Class is dismissed.
Our Solar System - The Kuiper belt
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I have seen the Solar System displayed in caches in several
locations around the country and on various scales. For this Solar
System of Caches, I will use the Utah Capital Building as a
stand-in for the Sun.
I will attempt to put the Solar System here in on the Wasatch
Front, on a scale of 1 miles = 1 astronomical unit (AU). An AU is a
unit of length equal to about 149,597,871 km (92,960,000 mi.). It
is defined as the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun over
one Earth orbit.
The following information has been condensed from information found
on Winapedia.
The Kuiper belt (pronounced /'ka?p?r/, rhyming with "viper"),
sometimes called the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, is a region of the
Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune
(at 30 AU) to approximately 55 AU from the Sun.[2] It is similar to
the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide
and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it
consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the Solar
System's formation. While the asteroid belt is composed primarily
of rock and metal, the Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of
frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia and
water. It is home to at least three dwarf planets – Pluto,
Haumea and Makemake.
Since the Kuiper belt was discovered in 1992, the number of known
Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) has increased to over a thousand, and
more than 70,000 KBOs over 100 km (62 mi) in diameter are believed
to exist. The Kuiper belt was initially believed to be the main
repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than
200 years. However, studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the
Kuiper belt is dynamically stable, and that it is the farther
scattered disc, a dynamically active region created by the outward
motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago, that is their true place
of origin. Scattered disc objects such as Eris are KBO-like bodies
with extremely large orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from
the Sun.
Their dynamic orbits occasionally force them into the inner Solar
System, becoming first centaurs, and then short-period comets. Some
of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's
Phoebe, are also believed to have originated in this region. Pluto
is the largest known member of the Kuiper belt. Originally
considered a planet, Pluto's position as part of the Kuiper belt
has caused it to be redefined as a "dwarf planet". It is
compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt,
and its orbital period is identical to that of the KBOs known as
"Plutinos". In Pluto's honour, the four currently accepted dwarf
planets beyond Neptune's orbit are called "plutoids".
The Kuiper belt should not be confused with the hypothesized Oort
cloud, which is a thousand times more distant. The objects within
the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc
and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are
collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Xrrc Cyhttvat Njnl
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