Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Cutaway drawing of two radiation belts around Earth: the inner belt (red) dominated by protons and the outer one (blue) by electrons. Image Credit: NASA Image Credit: NASA The inner Van Allen Belt extends typically from an altitude of 0.2 to 2 Earth radii ( L values of 1.2 to 3) or 1,000 km (620 mi) to 12,000 km (7,500 mi) above the Earth.
The Gould Belt is a local ring of stars in the Milky Way, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees, first reported by John Herschel and Benjamin Gould in the 19th century. [1] It contains many O- and B-type stars , and many of the nearest star-forming regions of the local Orion Arm , to which the Sun belongs.
In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and expand outward to many times its current diameter (becoming a red giant), before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula and leaving behind a stellar remnant known as a white dwarf. In the distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun's retinue of planets.
A ring system is a disc or torus orbiting an astronomical object that is composed of solid material such as dust, meteoroids, planetoids, moonlets, or stellar objects. Ring systems are best known as planetary rings, common components of satellite systems around giant planets such as the rings of Saturn, or circumplanetary disks.
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] An astronomical unit , or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [ 19 ]
Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago; [18] scattered disc objects such as Eris have extremely eccentric orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from the Sun ...
Most highly inclined known main-belt asteroid from August 17, 1998, to October 19, 1998 MPC (88043) 2000 UE 110: 51.998° October 29, 2000 First main-belt asteroid discovered and numbered to have an inclination greater than 50°. MPC (138925) 2001 AU 43: 72.132° January 4, 2001 A Mars-crosser and near-Earth object. MPC (127546) 2002 XU 93: 77 ...
The Kuiper belt is a great ring of debris similar to the asteroid belt, but consisting mainly of objects composed primarily of ice. [195] It extends between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. It is composed mainly of small Solar System bodies, although the largest few are probably large enough to be dwarf planets. [196]