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In astronomy or planetary science, the frost line, also known as the snow line or ice line, is the minimum distance from the central protostar of a solar nebula where the temperature is low enough for volatile compounds such as water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to condense into solid grains, which will allow their accretion into planetesimals.
In geology, the frost line is the level down to which the soil will normally freeze each winter. By an analogy, the term is introduced in other areas. Frost line (astrophysics), a particular distance in the solar nebula from the central protosun where it is cool enough for hydrogen compounds such as water, ammonia, and methane to condense into solid ice grains.
The boundary of the region where ice could form in the early Solar System is known as the frost line (or snow line), and is located in the modern asteroid belt, between about 2.7 and 3.1 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. [23] [24] It is therefore necessary that objects forming beyond the frost line–such as comets, trans-Neptunian objects ...
The frost line—also known as frost depth or freezing depth—is most commonly the depth to which the groundwater in soil is expected to freeze. The frost depth depends on the climatic conditions of an area, the heat transfer properties of the soil and adjacent materials, and on nearby heat sources.
Most known large icy moons belong to giant planets, whose orbits lie beyond the Solar System's frost line; the remainder (such as Charon and Dysnomia) formed around dwarf planets such as Pluto and Eris, typically in large impacts not unlike the impact thought to have formed Earth's moon. In the case of icy gas giant satellites, an additional ...
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The boundary in the Solar System beyond which those volatile substances could coalesce is known as the frost line, and it lies at roughly five times the Earth's distance from the Sun. [5] Orbits Animations of the Solar System's inner planets orbiting.
If the frost line of our Solar system is 2.7 AE, how can both Earth and Mars, which are further inside, have large amounts of water ice?--Roentgenium111 17:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC) Asteroid and comets impacts could have easily brought water-ice with them. Keep in mind that Earth is a dry planet that is only 1.5% water by weight.