New solar system member is tail-less comet called 2006 SQ372

by William Atkins

Saturday, 23 August 2008

Page 2 of 3 The comet 2006 SQ372 is currently about two billion miles (three billion kilometers) from Earth and moving away from the Sun at a distance nearly equal to the orbit of the planet Neptune. The team thinks that 2006 SQ372 is the most distant object in the solar system to visit the outer planets. University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, also on the discovery team, stated, “It is pretty nifty to have found something that goes such a distance from the sun,” [Science News (subscription required): “Tiny object points to remote solar system reservoir”] Scientists are now hypothesizing that 2006 SQ372 came either from the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is a spherical cloud of comets, as a group called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), that lie about 50,000 AU, about one light-year, from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt is a region of space made up of small bodies, called Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), such as comets, asteroids, two dwarf planets (Pluto and Makemake), and many smaller frozen icy bodies (volatiles). It lies just beyond the orbit of Neptune (between 30 and 55 AU). According to a Science News article, University of Washington (Seattle) astronomer Nathan Kaib, one of the discoverers of the comet, thinks it came from the Oort Cloud. Kaib states, “We believe SQ372 is the first detected member of a comet population in the outer solar system that comes from the, up-until-now, unobserved inner Oort Cloud. Comets like SQ372 have the potential to tell us what the entire Oort Cloud looks like, which will test theoretical models of the cloud's formation as well as provide clues about the environment that the solar system first formed in.” [Science News] The Science News article goes into the possibilities of the comet being from the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt. Page three continues. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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