The Surprising King of the Kuiper Belt

[rhoenix]

“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

Although the innermost planets, from Mercury through Saturn, were known since ancient times, it’s only since the advent of the telescope that we’ve discovered what really lives in our Solar System. Over the past four centuries, the wonders of not only the distant Universe, but also our nearby neighborhood, have been uncovered in spectacular detail.



The third and fourth largest planets were discovered, as were a plethora of moons around other worlds, a belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter (at the ice-line of our Solar System, or where the strength of the Sun is insufficient to move water out of its solid phase), and a Kuiper belt out beyond the final planet. (And we have tremendous evidence of objects in the Oort cloud even beyond that!)



Although Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel and its bizarre failure to adhere to Kepler’s laws led to the prediction-and-discovery of Neptune in 1846, it wasn’t until 1930 that a lone astronomer, looking at pairs of images taken at different times, happened upon the serendipitous discovery of a lifetime.



Even though it was the only world located out beyond the orbit of Neptune for nearly 50 years (until Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, was discovered), it was recognized relatively quickly that Pluto was a harbinger for many more such objects, now recognized (and confirmed, since 1992) to be just one of a great many located in the Kuiper Belt. The other bodies began to exhibit a variety of sizes, shapes, and orbital characteristics, although they all had a number of properties that threw Pluto’s “privileged” status as a “planet” into question:

• similar, trans-Neptunian orbits in the same direction and with similar periods,
• masses and sizes of the same order-of-magnitude as Pluto,
• Pluto-like densities and surface properties, with lots of surface methane ice,
• similar atmospheric compositions to Pluto, as seen by occultations, and
• numbers that grew from “a few” to “dozens” to more than a thousand as of today.

This all came to a head in 2005, when it was discovered that Pluto isn’t even the most massive object in the Kuiper Belt!



That distinction belongs to Eris, which weighs in at about 127% the mass of Pluto. (Although it may still be the case that Pluto is physically larger — in terms of radius — than Eris is; they’re both very close to one another and their size error bars overlap.) That discovery paved the way for a new classification scheme that included an additional class of Solar System objects known as dwarf planets, of which Eris and Pluto are the two most massive at the present time.

But when it comes to the King of all Kuiper Belt objects, none of these little monsters can stake that claim. Because there’s one object that we don’t normally think of as a Kuiper Belt object that has them all beat.



This is Neptune, the outermost planet in our Solar System. No, it doesn’t qualify as a Kuiper Belt object; it’s a planet, just like you’ve always learned. But back in 1846, there were some awfully powerful telescopes in the world, certainly much better and bigger ones than were around in 1781 (when Uranus was discovered) or at any time before that. Back in 1781, there was only one telescope in the world — commissioned in 1780 — that had a primary mirror of two feet (61 cm) or more in diameter.

By time 1846 came around, the largest telescope in the world had a primary mirror that was six feet (1.8 meters) in diameter, and amateurs with no formal training — like William Lassell — were building their own two foot diameter telescopes themselves.



The timetable for the discovery of Neptune was swift: Urbain Le Verrier announced his prediction for the undiscovered planet’s position on August 31, 1846, and composed a letter to Johann Galle, director of the Berlin observatory. Galle and his assistant, Heinrich d’Arrest, looked for the planet on September 23, and discovered it that very night in one of the greatest accomplishments of all-time in theoretical astrophysics.

But news traveled fast, and back in England, William Lassell was eager to view the newly-discovered world.



Just 17 days after the discovery of the hypothesized new world that had occupied many of the world’s greatest professional astronomers for decades, a virtually unknown and amateur telescope-maker discovered Triton, by far the largest satellite world of Neptune. (Although to be fair, it was the largest telescope in England at the time.) If all the Solar System’s moons were compared to one another, Triton would be the seventh largest in size, behind only Earth’s Moon, Saturn’s Titan, and the four Jovian moons discovered by Galileo.



But — up close — Triton doesn’t look like any other large moon in the entire Solar System! For one, every other large moon revolves around its planet the same way all the planets revolve around the Sun: counterclockwise, as viewed if you flew directly upwards above the Earth’s north pole. But not Triton, which revolves around Neptune in the opposite direction!

In terms of density, it resembles Pluto far more than it resembles either Neptune or any other Moon in the Solar System. And in terms of atmospheric composition, it’s virtually identical to the known worlds found in the Kuiper Belt. (Check it out: it even has visible clouds!)



What does all this mean?

That Triton isn’t a naturally occurring moon of Neptune; it wasn’t created during the formation of the Solar System along with the planet the same way Saturn’s, Jupiter’s or Uranus’s moons were. Instead, it’s been gravitationally captured (by the same mechanism described here a few months ago) from its place of origin: the Kuiper Belt. We can tell where it originated from a combination of its density parameters, its surface features and its orbital mechanics, and it simply must have come from there!

Even though it isn’t currently in the Kuiper Belt, that doesn’t stop it from being the largest, most massive, most accessible, first-discovered, and in many subjective ways, greatest Kuiper Belt Object of them all!



It’s real, it’s spectacular, and unlike every other Kuiper Belt Object, we’ve already been there! That was thanks to Voyager 2 in 1989; take a look at this photo mosaic of a large chunk of its surface!



If it looks cantaloupe-like to you away from the poles, well done; that’s the semi-official NASA term for it! We’re going to learn a lot more about Kuiper Belt objects in general thanks to the aforementioned New Horizons mission, which will begin exploring Pluto in just a few months: in mid-2015. After a journey of many years, it’s only the diameter of Earth’s orbit away from Pluto itself!



So the next time you think about worlds from beyond our planets, don’t just think of frozen ice-and-rock-balls orbiting in deep space, nor only of the comets disturbed by passing gravitational bodies and hurled inwards towards the Sun, but also of the rogue worlds that migrate inwards and wind up captured by gas giants.

After all, if you didn’t include them, you’d be missing out on Triton, largest of all the trans-Neptunian objects and the original King of the Kuiper Belt!

An image-heavy article, but the images go nicely to illustrate what's being told.

[Batman]

The King of the Kuiper Belt is obviously Qu'nos. Full scale habitable planet, core world of an interstellar empire, and we never noticed it was there.

[LadyTevar]

Qu'nos

The fuck you talking about, Bats? That's the Klingon homeworld, it's nowhere NEAR Earth's system.

[Batman]

The ENT opener begs to disagree
Though Kuiper Belt is indeed a little close on hindsight, it's more like the Oort Cloud.

[LadyTevar]

...................
You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me. *researches*

Astronomical dataEdit
Kronos 2259
Qo'noS

Using the Vulcan star charts, Qo'noS was first visited by Humans in 2151. It was about four days away from Sol at warp 4.5 (ENT: "Broken Bow") The planet was located in the Qo'noS system. The system was in Sector 70 (the Qo'noS sector) in block 27 (the Omega Leonis sector block) in the Beta Quadrant. The exact coordinates of the planet were 43.89.26.05 in grid 09, quad 68, block 27, sector 70. This system was less than 90 light years from the Sol system. (ENT: "Two Days and Two Nights"; Star Trek Into Darkness, display graphics)

In "Two Days and Two Nights", the NX-class Enterprise, set a milestone several months after its mission to Qo'noS, by becoming the first Earth ship to travel 90 light years away from the Sol system.
Omega Leonis is a real star in the constellation Leo, located 112 light years away from Earth.
According to Star Trek Encyclopedia, during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the homeworld was called Kling. The location of Kling in relation to Sol and other stars was depicted on a star chart. According to The Worlds of the Federation, the homeworld was located at coordinates -321.5, 48.6, -87.9. The grid, quad, block, sector designation system used in the display readout of the portable transwarp beaming device in Star Trek Into Darkness was introduced in the Star Trek Star Charts reference book (pp. 14-17).

90 Light Years =/= Kuiper Belt, or even Oort Cloud, Detective. Try again.

[Batman]

And yet 'Broken Bow Pt I' gave the travel time as four days...and her speed as 100c.

[Lys]

That's a little over a lightyear, somewhere around 70 000 AU, which is in fact inside the Oort Cloud. Would have been a clever reference except that we're talking about the Kuiper Belt. On the note of which, it's actually pretty cool that Triton is a sizeable Kuiper Belt object captured by Neptune, thanks for sharing rhoenix.

[Batman]

I'm reasonably certain I commented on my Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud mixup upthread.

[General Havoc]

Qu'onos is very clearly placed well outside the solar system in hundreds and hundreds of pieces of Star Trek canon, and harping on a single line by a guy who couldn't even pronounce the word Klingon correctly in a single episode of the show does not change any of that.

Unless of course, we're making the claim that single pieces of incidental canon overrule everything else. But I'd strongly suggest against making such a claim...



... I'd hate for you to be called a sellout.

[LadyTevar]

Besides, it's ST:ENT. Which was a piece of shite anyway.

[Lys]

I think Batman was clumsily attempting to make a joke at Enterprise's expense, not argue that this one line of dialogue should be taken seriously.

[Batman]

Havoc if that was the worst you could find you didn't look all that hard
Yes of course I wasn't saying that overrides the rest of the canon. As far as I'm personally concerned ENT isn't part of the canon. (Which Enterprise isn't there in in the Big E's ancestor's gallery in The Motionless Picture? Anybody?) But since ENT did effectively state Qu'nos is in or about the Oort Cloud I fail to see why I shouldn't mock them for it.

[General Havoc]

Havoc if that was the worst you could find you didn't look all that hard
Yes of course I wasn't saying that overrides the rest of the canon. As far as I'm personally concerned ENT isn't part of the canon. (Which Enterprise isn't there in in the Big E's ancestor's gallery in The Motionless Picture? Anybody?) But since ENT did effectively state Qu'nos is in or about the Oort Cloud I fail to see why I shouldn't mock them for it.

What can I say? That one spoke to me...

[LadyTevar]

That's a little over a lightyear, somewhere around 70 000 AU, which is in fact inside the Oort Cloud. Would have been a clever reference except that we're talking about the Kuiper Belt. On the note of which, it's actually pretty cool that Triton is a sizeable Kuiper Belt object captured by Neptune, thanks for sharing rhoenix.

Lys, you missed where I quoted from the StarTrek Memory Alpha. Qo'noS was 90 lightyears out. Which is far beyond the Oort, which means the Batman is wrong the damned planet is Not In Our SYSTEM.
The true star they used for the Qo'noS system is actually 112 lightyears away, in the constellation Leo.

[Batman]

Memory Alpha says it's 'less' than 90 ly out. Oort Cloud is definitely less than 90 ly. And as I already mentioned, 'Broken Bow' says 4 days and 100c so...yeah, Oort Cloud. The entirety of Trek canon outside ENT disagrees, hell a goodly portion of ENT does, that doesn't change the fact that 'Broken Bow Pt I' effectively parked the planet in the Oort Cloud.

[Lys]

Lady Tevar, Batman is making fun of Enterprise for having a quote that puts the Klingon homeworld in the Oort Cloud. I was confirming that this quote does, in fact, place the Klingon homeworld in the Oort Cloud. Nobody thinks the Klingon homeworld is actually at that location, the very notion is being mocked, however inexpertly, because it's stupid.

[Josh]

Star Trek writers generally were not even science fiction writers, let alone having any basic science literacy. They set things at the speed of plot and pulled numbers out of their asses to whatever extent sounded impressive to them.

Kinda like the old classic Pulse Rifle, 40 Watt range.

(Aka the standard-issue Imperial Guard lasgun.)

[LadyTevar]

Lady Tevar, Batman is making fun of Enterprise for having a quote that puts the Klingon homeworld in the Oort Cloud. I was confirming that this quote does, in fact, place the Klingon homeworld in the Oort Cloud. Nobody thinks the Klingon homeworld is actually at that location, the very notion is being mocked, however inexpertly, because it's stupid.

Then the Detective needs to learn to use the fuckin' smilies. to show when he's joking.

[Lys]

Well, yes, that's where the "inexpertly" part comes in.

[Batman]

I was assuming I didn't need smileys because it being mockery was blindingly obvious thanks to the impossibility (not to mention abject stupidity) of Qu'nos being in the Oort Cloud.

[rhoenix]

I was assuming I didn't need smileys because it being mockery was blindingly obvious thanks to the impossibility (not to mention abject stupidity) of Qu'nos being in the Oort Cloud.

You're not the only one to have a joke fall flat, Bats.

Though you have to admit the ensuing drama was pretty funny.

[Batman]

That it was

[Lys]

I have to hand the victory to Havoc on this one, it's hard to top silly silver age covers.