The Realm of the Icy Dwarfs

The Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, and the Comet

Connection

Today we’ll explore he most distant denizens of our Solar System, what I call the icy dwarfs.
Like Triton, some of these worlds are large enough to be spherical and one in particular, has
revealed itself to be much more interesting than we ever could have imagined.

1
 Learning Goals
• Pluto
• What characteristics does it and it’s orbit share with
other Solar System objects?
• Why the controversy over its status?
• The Kuiper Belt
• What is the Kuiper Belt and how did it form?
• How are the objects in it related to Pluto and Triton?
• The Oort Cloud
• What is the Oort Cloud and how did it form?
• The Comet Connection
• What do the KB and OC have to do with comets?

We’ll start with Pluto, that fascinating little world that lost its planet status several years ago,
and we’ll discuss exactly why that happened. It has a lot to do with our understanding of Pluto
and Triton and the discovery of larger groups of icy worlds that live in two somewhat distinct
locations in our Solar System. The objects in those regions, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud,
are related to comets somehow, so we’ll explore that connection as well.

2
 Pluto’s
Orbit

Neptune

Pluto has long been a world shrouded in mystery, but there were some properties that we have
known for sometime about this little world that had us questioning its planet status for some
time.

The first was it’s mass - Pluto is small. Long before Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in
1930, we suspected there may be an object beyond Neptune and given the huge masses we
had determined for the Gas Giants, it was reasonable to assume that the next object we found
out there would be large too, some thought maybe as large as 10 Earth masses. When Pluto
was finally discovered, we still thought it was big, at least the size of the Earth, but it wasn’t
until its large satellite Charon was discovered that we could use Kepler’s laws to determine a
mass…and it turned out that it wasn’t nearly as large as we thought! Not even as big as our
Moon.

The other issue was its orbit. If you assume the planets formed with the Sun, much like
regular satellites form with their parent planets, then planets should all orbit the Sun in fairly
circular (low eccentricity) orbits directly above the equator of the Sun. This is true for the first 8
planets, but not so for Pluto. In the animation at left, the orbit of Pluto is traced out in red. As
you can see, it’s orbit is inclined to those of the 8 planets and the Sun’s equator, by about 17
degrees. It’s orbit is also highly elliptical (e=0.25), so much so that it actually passes within
Neptune’s orbit for part of its trip around the Sun as shown in the sketch at bottom.

Credits:
Image 01 - http://www.as.utexas.edu/~gebhardt/u303f15/planet1.html
Image 02 - "Plutoorbit1.5sideview" by Lookang many thanks to author of original simulation =
Todd K. Timberlake author of Easy Java Simulation = Francisco Esquembre - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plutoorbit1.5sideview.gif#/media/File:Plutoorbit1.5side
view.gif
Image 03 - "Pluto discovery plates". Via Wikipedia -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto_discovery_plates.png#/media/File:Pluto_discovery_plat
es.png
3
Pluto orbits between about 30-50 AU from the Sun and is very small. As such, its ridiculously
hard to observe from Earth. The top image is the Hubble Space Telescope’s best observations
of the system, so beyond knowing that it’s small, has an odd orbit, and has five satellites, we
couldn’t say much more about this system.

It wasn’t until New Horizon’s flew past it on July 15 2015, that we finally got our first up close
and personal look at this little world on the edge of our Solar System. The bottom image is of
Pluto (left) and its largest satellite, Charon (right) on New Horizon’s approach. The image at
left is New Horizon’s departure picture of Pluto as it eclipsed the Sun, revealing the tenuous
atmosphere of the backlit world.

Image 01 - "Blue hazes over backlit Pluto" by NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI -

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/nh-finds-blue-skies-and-water-ice-on-pluto. Licensed under Public
Domain via Commons –
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_hazes_over_backlit_Pluto.jpg#/media/File:Blue_
hazes_over_backlit_Pluto.jpg
Image 02 - "NH-PlutoCharon-Color-NewHorizons-20150711" by NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI - nasa
website – How Big Is Pluto? New Horizons Settles Decades-Long Debateimage. Licensed
under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NH-
PlutoCharon-Color-NewHorizons-20150711.jpg#/media/File:NH-PlutoCharon-Color-
NewHorizons-20150711.jpg
Image 03 - NASA/ESA/JHU/APL/SwRI

4
 Pluto Charon

Pluto was originally discovered in February of 1930. 85 years later, July 2015, we finally got
our first look at the surfaces of Pluto and it’s regular satellite Charon. Two very different looking
worlds with one common theme…very young, surfaces with signs of very recent and perhaps
very unique geologic activity! If you are thinking these look familiar, think back to presentation
8-1 when you were introduced to Triton, Neptune’s spherical satellite. We thought maybe
Pluto would look similar and we were correct!

You’ll learn more about the details of the New Horizon’s mission and what its revealed about
this system in the supplemental presentation in this module. For now let’s continue on with the
reasons for Pluto’s eventual demotion from Planethood.

Credits:
Image 01 - "Nh-pluto-in-true-color 2x JPEG" by NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute -
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=243.
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nh-
pluto-in-true-color_2x_JPEG.jpg#/media/File:Nh-pluto-in-true-color_2x_JPEG.jpg
Image 02 - "Charon in Color (HQ)" by NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI (colored using Adobe Photoshop
CS5) - Image modified using Adobe Photoshop CS5. Licensed under Public Domain via
Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charon_in_Color_(HQ).jpg#/media/File:Charon_in_Co
lor_(HQ).jpg

5
 What Makes an Object a Planet?
1. The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
2. The object must be massive enough to be rounded by
its own gravity. More specifically, its own gravity should
pull it into a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium.
3. It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

So what is the definition of a planet, anyway? It wasn’t until 2006 that the IAU (Astronomy’s
governing body) finally defined three main criteria an object has to meet to be considered a
planet. [read slide] Obviously Pluto fits the first two criteria. Unfortunately, it, much like Ceres
and Vesta in the Asteroid Belt, fails the third.

Credits:
Image 01 - "PIA19948-NH-Pluto-Norgay-Hillary-Mountains-2050714" by NASA/Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute -
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA19948.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via
Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA19948-NH-Pluto-Norgay-Hillary-
Mountains-2050714.jpg#/media/File:PIA19948-NH-Pluto-Norgay-Hillary-Mountains-
2050714.jpg

6
Pluto orbits the Sun among numerous other icy objects in a ring or belt of material called the
Kuiper Belt. These small, dark objects are really hard to find and observe, even with modern
telescopes though, we’ve still managed to find over 100,000 of them since we started actively
looking for outer solar system objects back in the late 1970’s. New Horizon is on its way to
intercept a KBO in 2020. Pluto with the exception of being spherical, is very much like the rest
of the KBOs in that its composed mostly of ice and has companions. Pluto and Charon could
almost be classified as a binary object with some debris, much like other KBOs.

You might be asking yourself, why is all of this material there, why hasn’t it accreted into
something bigger after all this time - and you may also be thinking it’s a situation like the
Asteroid Belt…and you’d be about half right. Pluto’s orbital period of about 248 years gives us
some idea of what’s at play way out there.

Credits:
Image 01 - NASA and A. Feild (Space Telescope Science Institute) NASA Copyright Free
Policy
Image 02 - "Pluto moon P5 discovery with moons' orbits" by NASA, ESA, and L. Frattare
(STScI) - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/32/image/c/. Licensed under
Public Domain via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto_moon_P5_discovery_with_moons
%27_orbits.jpg#/media/File:Pluto_moon_P5_discovery_with_moons%27_orbits.jpg
Image 03 - http://app.plutosafari.com/articles/guide/mission.html

7
 Kuiper Belt Issues  
1. Lots of space.
2. Very little material.
3. Long accretion time.

Most KBOs look like the image at top right – they’re basically icy asteroids, so most reside in
the strength regime. And, yes, you heard that right, it takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the Sun…
that means Pluto has barely made one complete orbit of the Sun since the United States won
its independence! The takeaway message there is that things move very slowly at 50 AU from
the Sun. Think about Kepler’s Third Law – P^2~ a^3. The farther from the Sun an object
orbits, the slower it moves. Recall also that for objects to accrete they must collide…
frequently, to build something big over time.

The Kuiper Belt has three main issues that prevent objects from accreting there. One is that,
much like asteroids in the AB, there is a lot of space between KBOs so they do not collide with
each other very often.

Second, there isn’t a lot of material out there to build something big. It’s estimated that the
total mass of the KB is no more than a 10th of an Earth mass!

The third problem is accretion time, or how long it would take that small amount of mass to
accrete into a larger object. Accretion time depends strongly on distance from the Sun both
because of the slower orbits and the smaller amount of material. In fact, there is a debate over
whether there was enough time for Uranus and Neptune to grow at their current locations. But
the point is that the KB just hasn’t been around long enough yet to accrete into anything
bigger!

Credits:
Image 01 - Artist Impression of Accretion. Image Credit: Alan Brandon/Nature
Image 02 - Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

8
 Pluto and Neptune never get Pluto
Neptune
closer than 18 AU!

The KB may appear to be a smooth distribution of material but it’s really not. Much like the AB,
the KB has resonance gaps induced by its close proximity to Neptune. The red dot on the left
hand image is Pluto’s location. As you can see it’s in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune and
there’s actually a pileup of objects at this resonance. Turns out Neptune basically misses
these objects - whenever Pluto is inside Neptune’s orbit, Neptune is on the other side of the
Sun, so it is never close enough to gravitationally influence or change its orbit so Pluto and
the rest of them will forever remain in the KB, undisturbed by Neptune.

Credits:
Image 01 - distribution of orbit elements for the 1000 or so known Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).
http://gemelli.spacescience.org/~hahnjm/data_science/data_science.html, Joseph M. Hahn,
Ph.D
Image 02 - "Kuiper belt plot objects of outer solar system" by WilyD at English Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kuiper_belt_plot_objects_of_outer_solar_system.png#
/media/File:Kuiper_belt_plot_objects_of_outer_solar_system.png

9
 Dwarf Planets

The nail in the coffin, so to speak, for Pluto’s Planethood came with the discovery of Eris in
2003. With similarly sized Ceres in the AB and the discovery of now several other large,
spherical KBOs, including Eris which is estimated to be larger and more massive than Pluto,
the question soon became – “How many planets do we let into the planet club…10, 15, how
many?” This was the main driver behind the IAU’s final criteria for an object to be a planet.
Those that fail the third criterion - objects incapable of gravitationally influencing and clearing
their neighborhoods were given a new category.

There are those of us who grew up (and published papers!) with 9 planets in the Solar System,
and will forever think of little Pluto as one of 9, but for the moment, Pluto, like its diminutive
brethren, Ceres, Vesta and those pictured at top are now part of a new class of objects that we
call dwarf planets.

Credits:
Image 01 - "EightTNOs" by Lexicon - Based on the public domain Nasa images: Image:2006-
16-d-print.jpg, Image:Orcus art.png.Source Page from 2006:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2006/16/image/dYou can visually
verify that the names and former designations of these objects match up on the image. For
example: Eris, former designation 2003 UB313, Makemake, former designation 2005 FY9, and
Haumea, former designation 2003 EL61. The references for the names can all be found here,
at the Minor Planets Center: just type Eris, Makemake, Haumea, etc. in the box and click "get
ephemerides", and beside each one is the link "show naming citation".. Licensed under CC BY-
SA 3.0 via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EightTNOs.png#/media/File:EightTNOs.png
Image 02 - S. Alan Stern Nature 468, 775–776 (09 December 2010)

10
 Sun

Plumes
UV &
Visible

IR

Nitrogen
Liquid Surface Ic
IR e
Dark Subsurface Material

We think most spherical objects in the KB probably look a lot like Triton, Pluto and Charon.
Geologically active surfaces, composed mostly of nitrogen and water ices and organic
molecules, some perhaps with tenuous atmospheres like Pluto and Triton, likely driven by the
same mechanism we described for Triton’s cryo-volcanoes, a nitrogen-ice greenhouse.

Credits:
Image 01 - HTTP://SPACE-PICS.TUMBLR.COM/ source:http://imgur.com/r/space/s3pAQ5D

11
I promised to connect these icy outer worlds to comets, but first lets talk about what comets
are.

Comets are mostly made of ice (this is an important clue) but they do have some rock content.
We generally refer to them as “dirty snowballs”. We see them in the night sky all the time, but
comets are continually losing material as they periodically approach the Sun, so they are
slowly disintegrating with each pass.

The rocky remnants of former comets can still be seen periodically when the Earth passes
through the remaining rocky debris that was left after all of the volatiles have been lost. These
are what we call meteor showers, like the Geminids Meteor Shower in this image. The tiny
rock particles burn up high in the Earth’s atmosphere, but put on a great show on a clear night.

This means that comets have a finite lifetime before all of the volatile materials are liberated
from the objects and they disintegrate. Given their small average size, short period comets
can only last for about 1000 orbits or about a million years. The fact that we still see comets
today means there must be a big reservoir or source of them elsewhere!

Credits:
Image 01 - An image of Halley's Comet taken in 1986. NASA.
Image 02 - "This shot is a composite of about 700 frames from a time-lapse I took in Big Sur,
CA. I found 61 frames with meteors in them. Then I stacked the frames and created masks for
each meteor. " The image was taken Dec. 13, 2012. Credit: Kenneth Brandon

12
In order to understand where comets come from, we need to understand how they orbit the In
Sun. Here I plot the distribution of the velocities of comets as a fraction of their escape velocity Su
from the Sun. As you can see (and as Jan Oort noticed back in 1950) most comets we have fro
observed are barely bound to the Sun: their velocities in the inner Solar System are such that ob
they will orbit out to 1/3th the distance to the nearest star before returning millions of years th
from now. Oort suggested that these long period comets are just a small sample, those that fro
happen to pass close to the Sun, of a much larger reservoir: the Oort Cloud. ha

Also notice the one outlier at 1.8 times the escape velocity: that is comet 2I/Borisov, Al
discovered in August, 2019. This is the first known interstellar comet: a visitor from a di
completely different Solar System! co

Image credit: created by Tom Quinn from the JPL comet database, 11/2019 Im

13
 ← Prograde | Retrograde →

Long period comets are defined by having orbital periods much greater than 100 years. As
well, their orbits have a broad range of inclinations, shown in blue here. These objects orbit
the Sun in both the prograde and retrograde or clockwise directions. Hence the Oort cloud is
a spherical distribution of comets.

On the other hand Short period comets, or those have orbital periods on average less than
100 years, shown in orange, and have fairly low orbital inclinations, meaning they orbit
close to the plane of the Solar System. They have mostly prograde orbits, meaning they orbit
the Sun in the same direction as it spins on its axis and in the same direction as the planets
(counter clockwise).

Credits:
Created by Tom Quinn from JPL comet database, November, 2019

14
Here is one more clue about the short period comets: I have plotted another quantity: the
distribution of their aphelion distance, the farthest the comet gets from the Sun. Note where
the peaks are: a large peak at 5 AU, where Jupiter is, and a smaller one at 10 AU, the location
of Saturn, and perhaps even at 20 AU, coinciding with Uranus.

Clearly, these comets are being influenced by the giant planets, but if they are interacting with
the gas giants, they probably won’t stick around for long because of the strong gravity of those
planets! So what’s going on?

Credit: Created by Tom Quinn from JPL comet database, November 2019.

15
 The Comet-Kuiper Belt Connection

For the short period comets, the strong interactions with the Giant Planets and the low
orbital inclinations should get you thinking back to the Kuiper Belt.

Resonances, as you know, change orbits. Resonance interactions with Neptune change the
orbits of objects in the KB and push them into planet crossing paths with the Gas Giants.
These objects are called Centaurs or scattered disk objects. They are the dots colored
green and orange in the left image.

But once a KBO starts interacting with Neptune, it doesn’t end there: Neptune hands it off to
Uranus, Uranus hands it off to Saturn, and then Saturn or Jupiter sends it into the inner Solar
System where we see it as a Short Period comet.

Credits:
Image 01 - "Kuiper belt plot objects of outer solar system" by WilyD at English Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kuiper_belt_plot_objects_of_outer_solar_system.png#
/media/File:Kuiper_belt_plot_objects_of_outer_solar_system.png
Image 02 - http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/04/29/the-closest-kuiper-belt-
object/. 2006-2015 ScienceBlogs LLC. ScienceBlogs is a registered trademark of
ScienceBlogs LLC. All rights reserved.

16
 KBO’s New Orbit
A. Comet Shoemaker-Levy Collision
B.
Sun

Jupiter

KBO KBO’s New Orbit

C. Sun

Jupiter

KBO

As the (former) KBO interacts with each Gas Giant, one of three scenarios results.

The first and most obvious is A. that the KBO will hit the planet (or one of the planet’s moons)
and be destroyed. Now recall that the cratering of the terrestrial worlds was due to asteroids,
rocky objects tossed into the inner solar system by Jupiter. Recall also that the cratering
record of solid surfaces of the outer solar system is different from that of terrestrial worlds…
different because the population of impactors is different. The population of impactors for outer
Solar System bodies come not from the AB, but from the KB! Objects tossed in by gravitational
interactions with Neptune! This is why crater counts from the outer Solar System can not be
compared to crater counts from the inner Solar System!!

Now the scenarios other than collision are:

B. the KBO is tossed toward the Sun or

C. the KBO is tossed out of the Solar System.

If an object interacts with Jupiter, it has about a 50/50 chance of having its orbit changed in
one of these last two ways. I’ll start by addressing situation B so keep C in mind for later.

Credits:
Image 01 - Artist’s conception of the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, as
seen from the Galileo spacecraft. At the time of the first impact, the comet fragments will be
much farther apart than shown in this illustration. (Courtesy D.A. Seal/JPL)

17
KBOs form outside of the snow line so they are icy, volatile rich objects. When KBOs are
tossed inside of the Snow line by Jupiter, they become comets. As they near the heat of the
Sun, the icy surfaces change phase as ices quickly sublimate to gasses and are lost to space,
creating their long beautiful tails, as the comet nears the Sun on its new orbit.

Comets display two beautiful tails, one made of the liberated gaseous molecules I just
described, and glows blue like in the image at top. The other is the dust and rock debris that is
also liberated from the comet’s surface.

Credits:
Image 01 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1142407/Thousands-unseen-dark-
comets-collision-course-Earth-warn-experts.html
Image 02 - "Halley's Comet - May 29 1910" by Professor Edward Emerson Barnard at Yerkes
Observatory, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. - Published in the New York Times on July 3, 1910.
Available from their online photo archive store, here. Licensed under Public Domain via
Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Halley%27s_Comet_-
_May_29_1910.jpg#/media/File:Halley%27s_Comet_-_May_29_1910.jpg

Image 03 - "495296main epoxi-1-full full" by NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD -

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/images/version1/IINMVUAXF_6000002_001_001_c
rop.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:495296main_epoxi-1-
full_full.jpg#/media/File:495296main_epoxi-1-full_full.jpg

18
As we saw, Short period comets have orbits that are similar to Kuiper Belt objects –
fairly low inclinations, confined close to the plane of the Solar System, so the KB provides the
natural reservoir for these objects. The vast majority of short period comets are believed to
have once been KB members.

But what about the Oort Cloud, the source of the long period comets? From the Oort cloud
comets that do come close to the Sun, we infer that the Oort cloud is not a disk, but a sphere
of material that extends out to 100,000 AU: 1/3 the distance to the nearest star! Interactions
of these comets with other stars explains the random trajectories and broad range of orbital
inclinations of long period comets. But how did these objects come to reside this far from the
Sun? How did the Oort Cloud form?

Recall “Case C” when we talked about comets interacting with the gas giants. While Jupiter
tends to scatter comets right out of the Solar System (perhaps creating intestellar comets like
2I/Borisov), but the smaller gas giants send a fraction of comets to the Oort cloud distances, at
which point the interactions with stars randomizes the direction of their orbits. In this case it is
good to have Jupiter around: if it didn’t scatter so many objects out of the Solar System, there
would be a lot more Oort cloud comets coming our way!

Credits:
Image 01 - Artists rendering of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. NASA

19
It’s possible though that the gas giants are not solely responsible for the vast number of
objects predicted to populate the Oort cloud. Stars do not form by themselves, isolated from
other stars out in space. We know they form in vast stellar nurseries where tens to thousands
of stars form close to each other at the same time. Over time, they wander away from each
other in the vastness of space becoming more isolated as they orbit the center of the galaxy.
Recent models suggest that the Sun, was a bit of a thief in its youth! Early in its formation it
may have “stolen” Oort Cloud objects from other nearby star systems before departing their
company.

And those same interactions with nearby stars that made the Oort cloud spherical can also
nudge objects from the Cloud, back in toward the Sun where we finally see them as long
period comets!

Credits:
Image 01 – “Artists conception of the Oort Cloud”. ESO
Image 02 - http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gallery-ii/galaxies-clusters/ngc-7129-is-an-
open-cluster-and-stellar-nursery-3000-ly-away-in-cepheus-bluish-dust-clouds-reflect-young-
stars-from-just-a-few-million-years-old-the-deep-red-shapes-caused-by-hydrogen-are-herb/

20
 Next Time
The Giant Planets and Their Atmospheres

So the Giant planets have a lot to do with the distribution of small bodies in our Solar System,
but they are also interesting in and of themselves. In lesson 9 we’ll have an up close look at
the Giant Planets and their amazing atmospheres.

21