1. Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt, Comets, and Asteroids
Origin of the Kuiper Belt
KBO’s up close (sort of)
The Pluto Affair…
Short period vs Long Period comets; origin in Kuiper Belt vs Oort Cloud
The Asteroid Belt and its origin

2. The Oort Cloud
Inferred by Jan Oort in the mid 20th Century, because there were so many comets on orbits with periods of thousands of years.
Kepler’s Laws imply outer end of orbit as far as half a light year away
This is about the tidal limit which would bind material to the sun vs the rest of the Galaxy, so it makes sense.
We cannot directly image anything in the Oort Cloud. Way too far away and dim to every hope to see.
Little angular momentum in this material, so not flattened like a disk as we see closer in to the sun. So, called the Oort “Cloud”, not the Oort “Belt”.

4. Beyond Neptune – cold and dark!
No planets beyond Neptune, instead, the Kuiper Belt of large comets…
“rocks” of light elements (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, chlorine…) are called “ice” and melt at very low temperatures.
Globs of this stuff, mixed with plenty of dust and dirt, are called “Comets”!

5. Why did we kick Pluto out of the Planet Club?
Several reasons:
1st – it has a highly inclined and elliptical orbit which crosses Neptune: an orbit like a comet, not a planet.
2nd – it’s one of thousands of small objects out there; a new class of objects – the Kuiper Belt Objects or KBO’s - we didn’t know about till the 1990’s. Pluto was discovered in 1930.
3rd – it’s mass….. Check this diagram out…

6. Pluto changing mass estimates

7. Triton – the only KBO photographed up close

8. KBO’s

9. Sedna, quaoar, pluto, earth/moon

10. Eris (aka 2003 UB313) – new “King of the Kuiper Belt”

11. Eris orbit

12. Collisions between Kuiper Belt Objects Now Thought to be the Main Source of Short-Period Comets
Simulations show that at the relative velocities KBO’s experience, that the pieces from collisions would result in many losing angular momentum and falling in on the highly elliptical orbits that short-period comets have.
Short period comets – a few miles across, not a few hundred miles across
Highly elliptical orbits falling deep in towards the sun, where sunlight makes them easy to see (and fun to watch!)
And also, easier for spacecraft to visit and photograph up-close

13. C/Wild closeup/ composite

14. C/Borrelly closeup

15. Halley closeup

16. Comet surface - artist

17. Mission: “Deep Impact” – colliding a boulder of copper with a comet

18. Deep Impact before/after

19. What did we Learn about C/Temple I?
The material excavated by the impact material contained more dust and less ice than had been expected.
Ruled out: Comet models of very porous material which had comets as loose aggregates.
The material was finer than expected; scientists compared it to talcum powder rather than sand. Other materials found included clays, carbonates, and sodium, and crystalline silicates which were found by studying the spectroscopy of the impact.
Clays and carbonates usually require liquid water to form and sodium is rare in space.
Comet Temple I was about 75% empty space, similar to a snow bank.

20. Comets – A Tale of Two Tails
Comets swing by the sun on big arcing orbits.
The gas is blown back rapidly, since gas atoms are very light. Gas tail is very straight and moves very fast – gas atoms left comet very recently.
Dust tail is yellowish and often curved, as the dust grains move very slowly, showing the history of the comets path over a longer history.

21. Hyakutake fisheye

22. Hyakutake long fl lens

23. K4 LINEAR; longer exposure

24. C/Machholz

25. C/Hale-Bopp

26. C/Hale-Bopp Jtree

27. C/Bradfield & LINEAR T7

28. C/IkeyaZhang and M31

29. holmes

30. Comets Don’t Live Forever…
Short period comets will lose surface on each passage around the sun
Halley’s comet estimated to lose 3 feet of surface depth on each orbit
In recent years we’ve seen several comets dissintegrate and melt away…

31. C/NEAR with SOHO

32. Comet P57 breaking up

33. S4 LINEAR breaking up

34. S4 LINEAR breakup b&w

35. S4 LINEAR up close

36. S4 LINEAR4

37. S4 pieces

38. SL9 string of comets

39. Crater chain on moon

40. Dust, rocks, are set free during this melting process
These remain in the orbit of the comet, but drift either ahead or behind the main comet as time goes on, and also spreading laterally up to several million miles away from the comet’s orbit path
If this torus of material crosses the Earth’s orbit, we see a meteor shower for a few hours or a few days

41. Uniform vs Leonid meteor streams

42. Comet Temple-Tuttle; parent of the Leonids

43. Leonids ’99 Ayers antiradiant

44. Leonids ‘01

45. Leonids ’01 fisheye

46. Leonids ’01 fisheye2

47. Leonids ‘02

48. Leonids Jtree

49. Leonids ’02 anti radiant

50. Leonids ‘02, lake moon

51. Leonids ’02 from space

52. oortcloud

53. Asteroids – Remnants of proto-planet(s) who’s orbits were roughed up by Jupiter’s gravity
Giant gap from Mars to Jupiter, plenty big enough to house another planet or two. But instead…
Thousands of bits and pieces of rock
Resonances and orbit crossings led to collisions, or maybe never came together in the first place (tidal stretching)
Total mass is less than that of Mars, but was probably higher initially.
Orbits of many no doubt collided with Jupiter or the sun
History of the Discovery of Asteroids very cool video!

54. Inner SS known asteroids all

55. IR spectra of Haumea

56. asteroidTrails

57. Amateur Astronomers are Helping to Advance our Understanding of Asteroids
Asteroid occultations of stars allow us to measure the size, shape, and precise orbits of asteroids.
IOTA provides software, website info etc and data collection and analysis of this data
Here’s a YouTube video of an asteroid occultation…

58. Pallas occultation

62. Radar of 3.5km NEO

63. AnnFrank from Stardust

64. The Asteroid AnneFrank

65. Eros, whole thing

66. Eros Landing Site

69. Eros surface

73. gaspra

74. Ida and Dactyl to scale

75. The Dawn Mission to Vesta
In 2011, the NASA’s “Dawn” mission arrived at Vesta and took up orbit, to map and study the brightest of all asteroids – Vesta
A cool little video

76. Asteroid close encounters, and Jupiter’s gravity, have changed some orbits, creating a population of earth-crossing asteroids. Those that haven’t already hit us, probably will in the (hopefully distant) future, causing…. Big Trouble!

77. NEA #

78. Daylight fireball

79. Michelle’s car

80. Fresh Russian Crater

81. MeteorCrater, Arizona

84. Over 500 injured. This impact equivalent to 25 Hiroshima A-bombs
Over 500 injured. This impact equivalent to 25 Hiroshima A-bombs. Didn’t do near as much damage because of lucky shallow trajectory, spent most of it’s energy high in the atmosphere

85. 65 Million Years Ago… A 10 km asteroid hit the Yucatan in Mexico
A suspected impact crater (the Shiva Crater 310 miles across) also found near the northern boundary of the India Plate is highly controversial, but if true, could have caused the Deccan formation, which is a huge lava formation also ~65 million years old.
Sulfates and chlorine release in the Deccan Formation could have been large enough to affect life and climate, as sulfates cool climate.
Another possibility is that the focusing of the crustal waves generated by the Yucatan impact in Mexico on the far side of the Earth (on the Indian tectonic Plate) could be related to the Deccan formation. We have seen this kind of focusing crustal action on the planet Mercury.
95% of researchers think the evidence favors the Yucatan Impact as the cause of the mass extinctions on Earth at that time, since the KT boundary layer found around the entire Earth is rich in iridium, micro-diamonds, shocked quartz, and carbon spherules – all signatures of a massive extra-terrestrial impact. Nice Summary
90% of all life on Earth was killed, 2/3 of all species went extinct, including the non-avian dinosaurs.

88. Chixilub crater

89. Only 13,000 years ago…
A ~3 km asteroid or comet hit North America, likely on the retreating Laurentian Ice Sheet
It’s now a leading explanation for what took out the wooley mammoths, saber tooth tigers, the Clovis people… and pretty much burned the continent to the ground
This is a new discovery; this research was published in 2007
I’ve been doing my own search for this tell-tale dark layer in likely locations around California – so far w/o luck…

91. And Soon….
1300 ft wide asteroid Apophis will make a near-collision with Earth on Friday the 13th, April 2029
If it threads through a 600m x 600m “keyhole” during this fly-by, it’ll return in 7 more years and collide with Earth.
If so, directly facing the on-coming Apophis in 2036…. is California (bummer, Dude!)

93. What to Do? Call up Bruce Willis?
NASA instead decided…
2015: Plan for space mission to launch
2019: craft rendezvous with Apophis and takes measurements allowing orbit to be determined to within yards
If collision will happen, design “Son of Deep Impact” for hitting asteroid in
Currents odds of Impact: 1 in 5500

94. What if we get Blind-sided by a much bigger asteroid?
…. That would be bad. We almost got hit by DA14 on Feb 13, 2013 (and DID get hit by a smaller rock the very same day – just ask the Russians).
Apophis will NOT hit us in 2029, and even if it did, it won’t be near as bad as this video

95. But Probably the Scariest News Item from the Apophis Story…
Astronaut and NASA scientist Rusty Schweikert commenting on what government agency may be in charge of asteroid deflection…might be NASA… but from a bureaucratic point of view, the candidate is expected to be Homeland Security
(Ponder that. I think we’re doomed)