Repeating a fun series I did in Salt Lake City (and surrounding counties), this time basing the Sun at the clock tower in Riverfront Park. Eastern Washington Solar System (EWSS) caches are places approximant the correct distance from the “Sun”, using the scale of 1 mile equals 1 Astronomical Unit, or the Mean Distance from the Sun to the Earth.
The Kuiper Belt is a flattened region at the edge of the Solar System. It is home to many rocky and icy bodies, called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), left over as the Solar System formed. It is the location of Pluto, and many other dwarf planets, such as Haumea and Makemake.
The Kuiper Belt is one of the largest structures in our solar system – others being the Oort Cloud, the heliosphere, and the magnetosphere of Jupiter. Its overall shape is like a puffed-up disk or donut. Its inner edge begins at the orbit of Neptune, at about 30 AU from the Sun. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from Earth to the Sun.) The inner, main region of the Kuiper Belt ends around 50 AU from the Sun. Overlapping the outer edge of the main part of the Kuiper Belt is a second region called the scattered disk, which continues outward to nearly 1,000 AU, with some bodies on orbits that go even farther beyond.
So far, more than 2,000 trans-Neptunian objects have been cataloged by observers, representing only a tiny fraction of the total number of objects scientists think are out there. In fact, astronomers estimate there are hundreds of thousands of objects in the region that are larger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide or larger. However, the total mass of all the material in the Kuiper Belt is estimated to be no more than about 10% of the mass of Earth.
Dwarf planet candidates Orcus and Quaoar, all cross the orbit of Neptune and are classified as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Beyond the outermost Kuiper Belt is the scattered disk, home to many more TNOs, comets and other objects, including dwarf planet Eris and TNO Sedna.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and named by English schoolgirl Venetia Burney
Most of the largest KBOs have moons:
Pluto - Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx, Kerberos
Eris - Dysnomia
Haumea - Namaka, Hi'iaka
Orcus - Vanth
Eris may be larger than Pluto
Missions
New Horizons: Pluto flyby in 2015, Kuiper Belt Object(s) in 2016-2020
(https://heliophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/690/solar-system-tour/KuiperBelt.html)
Easy parking for Geobuggy go juice, snacks and potty break while on the hunt, just across the street. Parking just off the road next to cache site.
Sun: GC7B9R1
Planets already in Orbit
GCBEGE0 EWSS Mercury
GCBEGEA EWSS Venus
GCBF2ZQ EWSS: Earth
GCFBEGE EWSS Mars
GCBET5V EWSS Jupiter
GCBFATC EWSS: Heliopause and Voyager Departure