Discovery of a Planetary-sized Object in the Scattered Kuiper Belt

By Michael E. Brown, C. Trujillo, D. Rabinowitz. 2005

197 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the discovery and initial physical and dynamical characterization of the object 2003 UB313. The object is sufficiently bright that for all reasonable values of the albedo it is certain to be larger than Pluto. Prediscovery observations back to 1989 are used to obtain an orbit with extremely small errors. The object is currently at aphelion in what appears to be a typical orbit for a scattered Kuiper Belt object, except that it is inclined by about 44° from the ecliptic. The presence of such a large object at this extreme inclination suggests that high-inclination Kuiper Belt objects formed preferentially closer to the Sun. Observations from Gemini Observatory show that the infrared spectrum is, like that of Pluto and 2005 FY9, dominated by the presence of frozen methane, although visible photometry shows that the object is almost neutral in color compared to Pluto's extremely red color. 2003 UB313 is likely to undergo substantial seasonal change over the large range of heliocentric distances that it travels; at its current distance, Pluto is likely to prove a useful analog for better understanding the range of seasonal changes on this body.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/129ecce0a23f631c3d8c4a4d12ae8822ec8b2a71

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The significance of meteorite density and porosity (2008, background): “Among those objects large enough for spectra to have been taken (Roush et al., 1996; Brown et al., 2005; Licandro et al., 2006; Tegler et al., 2007, 2008), some of them such as Pluto, Eris, and dwarf planet 2005 FY9 show the strong absorption bands of methane ice while others, including Pluto’s moon”
LATE ORBITAL INSTABILITIES IN THE OUTER PLANETS INDUCED BY INTERACTION WITH A SELF-GRAVITATING PLANETESIMAL DISK (2011, background): “Roughly 50% of the sky has been searched for Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) larger than 1000 km in radius, and two have been found: Pluto and Eris (Brown et al. 2005; Brown & 6 We note that the energy drift does not go to zero when the number of scatterers goes to zero.”
Photometric Observations Constraining the Size, Shape, and Albedo of 2003 EL61, a Rapidly Rotating, Pluto-sized Object in the Kuiper Belt (2005, methodology): “For example, our recent observations of 2003 UB313 (Brown et al. 2005a) reveal a surface composition very much like Pluto’s, dominated bymethane ice, but lacking Pluto’s red color at visible wavelengths.”
The Compositions of Kuiper Belt Objects (2011, background): “It is the fastest rotating and most elongated gravitation- ally bound object in the solar system, has a density nearly that of rock (Rabinowitz et al. 2006), and is surrounded by two moons (Brown et al. 2005, 2006).”
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Charon: Possible Evidence for Cryovolcanism on Kuiper Belt Objects (2006, background): “…appears representative of all large (rk750 km)KBOs in that its surface is characterized by CH4 absorption, like the surfaces of Eris (2003 UB313), radius 1200 km (Brown et al. 2005, 2006), 2005 FY9, radius 800 km (Licandro et al. 2006), and Sedna, radius 800 km (Barucci et al. 2005; Stern 2005).”