1. Dynamics in the Solar System Paul Wiegert Dept of Physics and Astronomy

2. My interests… Comets Asteroids Planets

3. The Solar System

4. The Solar System: dynamics

5. Asteroids 6489 Golevka Mountain-sized chunks of rock orbiting the Sun, asteroids are the leftovers of planet formation. Many live in the asteroid belt, but many have also “escaped”. They travel ever-changing paths throughout the Solar System, including near the Earth.

6. Near-Earth asteroids Over 2800 asteroids on orbits near the Earth are known, with more being found every day. Some of these have hit the Earth in the distant past…

7. Asteroid 4179 Toutatis Close approach to Earth September 29 2004

8. Asteroid 4179 Toutatis

9. View of Earth from Toutatis

10. Jupiter Trojan asteroids

11. Earth Lagrange point asteroids?

12. Co-orbital asteroids:Quasi-satellites 2002 AA29 (600 yrs in the future)

13. Co-orbital asteroids 3753 Cruithne

14. Planetary rings

15. Saturn’s rings

16. Cassini at Saturn F ring Prometheus

17. Comets Space icebergs, comet nuclei resemble asteroids but contain a fraction of frozen water and CO 2. Should they pass near the Sun, the vapour released can stretch for a 100 million km and fluoresces brightly under UV from the Sun.

18. Comets Near the nucleus: gas and dust production Comet Wild (Stardust) Comet Halley (Giotto)

19. Comets Dynamics of comets: long-period and short-period comets are different…

20. Long-period comets Shorter periods Smaller orbits I nclinations near those of the planets (prograde) Inclinations at right angles to those of the planets In the plane of the planets, but moving in the opposite direction (retrograde) Short pd comets

21. Q: What makes SP and LP comets different? A: Their origin Gerard P. Kuiper 1905-1973 Short-period comets come from the Kuiper-Edgeworth belt, a ring of "leftovers" at the edge of our Solar System. These remnants of planetary formation orbit in the plane of the planets, hence their low inclinations. Kenneth E. Edgeworth 1880-1972

22. Jan Oort 1900-1992 Long-period comets come from the Oort Cloud, a spherical cloud of frozen comet nuclei reaching up to half- way to the nearest stars. Both the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt are made up of planetesimals left over from the era of the formation of the planets. So why are they different?

23. Solid matter condensed out of the original spinning, flattened cloud of gas and dust (the ''solar nebula'') surrounding the proto-Sun. Elements at the edge of what would become our planetary system were too sparse to form planets. The Kuiper Belt is what still remains of this material. Solid bodies within the planetary system itself were all swept up into the growing planets. The formation of the solar system Or were they?

24. Gravitational Slingshot A number of space probes, including Voyager 1 and 2, have deliberately used a planet's gravity to slingshot themselves into different orbits. Many planetesimals in the early Solar System would have, by happenstance, undergone a similar effect. Some of these would have crashed into planets, some would have received only minor orbital changes. Still others would have been ejected into deep space, never to return. A few would have been flung far but not quite out... these ended up in the Oort cloud SEGWay (UC Berkeley)

25. Planets: Neptune and Pluto

27. Neptune and Pluto: Cosmic ballet