Sentences with phrase «small icy objects»

Traditionally, the solar system has been divided into planets (the big bodies orbiting the Sun), their satellites (a.k.a. moons, variously sized objects orbiting the planets), asteroids (small dense objects orbiting the Sun) and comets (small icy objects with highly eccentric orbits).

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of a small icy object within the rings of Saturn that may be a new moon, and may also provide clues to the formation of the planet's known moons.

Not exact matches

«I try to imagine how it would be to stand on the surface of this icy object — small enough that a fast sports car could reach escape velocity and drive off into space — and stare up at a 20 - kilometre wide ring system 1000 times closer than the Moon.»

New Horizons also could potentially take a close - up look at a smaller, more ancient object much farther out in the Kuiper Belt: the disk - shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune believed to contain comets, asteroids and other small, icy bodies.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — The solar system has gained a new extreme object: L91, a small, icy world with one of the longest known orbits, taking more than 20,000 years to go around the sun.

The Kuiper Belt hosts a swarm of distant, icy objects ranging in size from small, primordial planetesimals to much larger, highly evolved objects, representing a whole new class of previously unexplored cryogenic worlds.

The large satellites of Uranus show unique geologic features we'd like to understand (such as the tortured - looking surface of Miranda, a small moon with the tallest cliff in the Solar System), while Neptune's satellite Triton is thought to be a captured Kuiper Belt object, similar to Pluto, potentially harboring an ocean under its icy surface.

While NASA's Wide - field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) failed to the tell - tale warmth of gas giants like Saturn within 10,000 AUs and larger than Jupiter objects out to 26,000 AUs (NASA / JPL news release), an icy «super-Earth», would have been too cold and faint for WISE to detect — even if the hypothesized planet has a small internal heat source and absorbs some sunlight.

The discovery team presumes that VP113 has an icy reflective surface like other relatively small, outer Solar System objects, as the dwarf planet is observed to have a pink tinge, which is hypothesized to result from chemical changes produced by the effect of radiation on frozen water, methane, and carbon dioxide.

These comets are observed to come into the Solar System from all directions, which implies an immense spherical cloud of trillions of small icy, planetary objects — all potentially active but currently dormant comets — that extend as much as two light - years outward from Sol.