Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Hubble Harvests Distant Solar System Objects

This is an artist's concept of a craggy piece of Solar System debris that belongs to a class of bodies called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Astronomers culling the data archives of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have added 14 new TNOs to the catalog. The newfound TNOs range from 25 to 60 miles (40-100 km) across. Their method promises to turn up hundreds more. In this illustration, the distant Sun is reduced to a bright star at a distance of over 3 billion miles. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2010) — Beyond the orbit of Neptune reside countless icy rocks known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). One of the biggest, Pluto, is classified as a dwarf planet. The region also supplies us with comets such as famous Comet Halley. Most TNOs are small and receive little sunlight, making them faint and difficult to spot.

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