Sentences with phrase «region of the solar system»

At the time, it was an inert chunk of ice, dust and frozen gases, floating nearly motionless in the outermost region of the solar system, a thousand times more distant than Pluto.

This is because pockets of gas rich in heavy elements would be created if a comet in the outer regions of a solar system got vaporised by a dying star in its red giant phase or by the expanding planetary nebula that follows it (arxiv.org/abs/1001.4513).

Known as the Kuiper belt, in honor of the Dutch - born American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who predicted its existence, this region of the solar system contains Pluto, one of its largest members.

The comet traveled from the most distant region of our solar system called the Oort Cloud and made a close approach at 2:27 p.m. EDT within about 87,000 miles (139,500 kilometers) of the Red Planet.

It's 8 billion miles from the sun — Pluto is 3.6 billion — and in 2004 we had no idea that things in that very outer region of the solar system existed.

Titan's atmosphere may be the result of the accrual of methane and ammonia during its formation in a cold region of the solar system.

Dr Michele Bannister said: «We've discovered that this is a planetesimal with a well - baked crust that looks a lot like the tiniest worlds in the outer regions of our solar system, has a greyish / red surface and is highly elongated, probably about the size and shape of the Gherkin skyscraper in London.

The asteroid belt is a region of the solar system falling roughly between the planets Mars and Jupiter where the greatest concentration of asteroid orbits can be found.

Different regions of the solar system are characterized by highly variable ratios of these isotopes.

In the 1990s, thinking about Pluto shifted again with the realization that it is just one member of the Kuiper Belt, a swarm of thousands (if not millions) of tiny icy objects that circle the sun in the outer regions of the solar system.

«Some of the same processes that take place in deep space may occur in these icy bodies in the supercold outer regions of the solar system,» Allamandola says.

According to the geochemist, comets originate in the cool outer regions of the solar system where volatile water and carbon compounds condensed into ice.

In this paper, we review the scientific aspects of planetary space weather at different regions of our Solar System, performing a comparative planetology analysis that includes a direct reference to the circum - terrestrial case.

Soon the trickle of new objects became a flood and a new region of the solar system began to take shape: the Kuiper belt, named after Gerard Kuiper who in 1951 had suggested that such a collection of small bodies might have existed early in the history of the solar system.

Detecting water on Ceres supports models of the solar system in which giant planets, such as Jupiter, migrated to their current positions, mixing material from the outer and inner regions of the solar system.

Unlike Pluto, Planet Nine is so massive that its gravity dominates a region of the solar system that's bigger than any of the other known planets — something that Brown said makes it «the most planet - y of the planets in the whole solar system.»

Soon the trickle of new objects became a flood and a new region of the solar system began to take shape: the Kuiper Belt, named after Gerard Kuiper, who in 1951 had suggested that such a collection of small bodies might have existed early in the history of the solar system.

Many argued that size and shape weren't everything; a planet should also gravitationally dominate its region of the solar system, sweeping up or ejecting all other orbiting debris.

In 1992 it was discovered that Pluto and Charon weren't alone in this region of the Solar System; the area is teeming with smaller objects dubbed Kuiper Belt Objects.

As the center's Web site explains, the animation shows the motion of objects in the inner region of the solar system over a two - year period at 10 - day intervals.

The concept of space weather was advanced to describe the changing conditions in the Sun - Earth region of the solar system.

[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth.

[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System, where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth.

Not exact matches

The M - KOPA Solar system is literally lighting up a cleaner, greener — and safer — future for one remote region of the world.

Using data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, scientists believe they have solved a mystery from one of the solar system's coldest regions — a permanently shadowed crater on the moon.

In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets — a fact that Brown says makes it «the most planet - y of the planets in the whole solar system.»

Future observations and studies into the dynamical lifetimes of non-resonant planet - crossing orbits in the far regions of the outer solar system could help to further test the case for the existence and whereabouts of a ninth planet, Malhotra and her co-authors write.

A Southwest Research Institute - led team has discovered an elusive, dark moon orbiting Makemake, one of the «big four» dwarf planets populating the Kuiper Belt region at the edge of our solar system.

This size is comparable to the size of the Solar System, and the ring structure most likely represents the boundary region between infalling gas and a rotating disk structure around the protostar.

Using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), an interlinked system of 10 radio telescopes stretching across Hawaii, North America and the Caribbean, the astronomers have directly measured the distance to an object called G007.47 +00.05, a star - forming region located on the opposite side of the galaxy from our solar system.

As our solar system slowly orbits around the galactic center, the sun's ultraviolet radiation carves out an egg - shaped region of ionized hydrogen atoms surrounded by neutral hydrogen gas.

ne = the number of habitable planets around each star In days gone by, scientists would speak solemnly about our solar system's «habitable zone» — a theoretical region extending from Venus to Mars, but perhaps not encompassing either, where a planet would be the right temperature to have liquid water on its surface.

«We're going into a very hazardous region,» Bolton says, «probably the most hazardous region in the solar system outside of doing a dive bomb into the sun.»

They can emit 100 times as much energy as our entire Galaxy, yet from a region only about twice the size of the Solar System.

«If breakdown weathering occurs on the moon, then it has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in the solar system, especially in extremely cold regions that are exposed to harsh radiation from space,» says coauthor Timothy Stubbs of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

An abundance of minerals containing ammonia on a relatively rocky world like Ceres is surprising, De Sanctis says, because the volatile compound of nitrogen and hydrogen can not persist long in the relatively warm and sunny regions of the inner solar system where Ceres now resides.

The charging may create sparking, or electrostatic breakdown, and this «breakdown weathering» process has possibly changed the very nature of the moon's polar soil, suggesting that permanently shadowed regions, which hold clues to our solar system's past, may be more active than previously thought.

Today's best telescopes can penetrate only to the nearest part of the solar system's outer regions, known as the Kuiper belt.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) was part of an international team that recently discovered a relatively unpopulated region of the main asteroid belt, where the few asteroids present are likely pristine relics from early in solar system history.

Most CSP systems require significant amounts of water, which has proven to be a challenge in desert regions of the U.S. where solar power is most attractive, while Stirling engines require none other than small amounts for cleaning the mirrors.

If so, that would mean its material likely originated from different regions of the early solar system and became mixed together.

It's not much — just 6 kilograms per second — but there's water vapor coming off two regions of Ceres, the solar system's largest asteroid.

For the first time two spacecraft will soon make up - close studies of objects from the solar system's Kuiper Belt, a mysterious region beyond Neptune's orbit.

When charged particles from the inner solar system reach the boundary of the heliosphere, they sometimes undergo a series of charge exchanges with neutral gas atoms from the interstellar medium, dropping and regaining electrons as they travel through this vast boundary region.

It will have many other applications, ranging all the way from studies of the planets and satellites in the Solar System, through the properties of star - forming regions in the Milky Way and out to the distant Universe.

If a few key characteristics such as an exoplanet's topography and rotation rate are just right, then the inner edge of the habitable zone — the region in a solar system where conditions conducive to life can arise — will be closer to the host star than is usually thought.

Astronomers recently saw the chemical signature of phosphorus - oxygen molecules in a star - forming region, suggesting that simple precursors of DNA float in the soup of new solar systems.

The other two gaps are 100 AU and 160 AU from the central star, well beyond the extent of our solar system's Kuiper Belt, the region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.

Enceladus's venting hints at the presence of warmer regions deep inside — an environment that could support the chemistry of life, Porco says: «It's another place in the solar system that's warm and wet.»

«Prior to approximately four billion years ago, no large region of Earth's surface could have survived untouched by impacts and their effects,» says Simone Marchi, of NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute at the Southwest Research Institute.