IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v407y2000i6807d10.1038_35039572.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Extremely red Kuiper-belt objects in near-circular orbits beyond 40 AU

Author

Listed:
  • S. C. Tegler

    (Department of Physics & Astronomy Northern Arizona University)

  • W. Romanishin

    (Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Oklahoma)

Abstract

Kuiper-belt objects (KBOs) are an ancient reservoir of comets beyond Neptune's orbit1,2. Some of these objects were recently found to have the reddest optical colours in the Solar System3, but the number of objects for which accurate colours were available was too small for any correlation to be discerned between colour and physical or dynamical properties, which might shed light on the origin of these objects. Here we report that all nine of the KBOs in our survey on near-circular (low-eccentricity) orbits with perihelion distances larger than 40 AU have extremely red surfaces, thereby connecting an observable property with a dynamical class. Of the objects with orbital eccentricities greater than 0.1, about half are also very red, while the rest have colours similar to the Sun, meaning that reflected sunlight is not strongly modified by the objects' surface properties. In addition, of the 13 ‘classical’ KBOs (those with semimajor axis a ≈ 45 AU and eccentricity e

Suggested Citation

  • S. C. Tegler & W. Romanishin, 2000. "Extremely red Kuiper-belt objects in near-circular orbits beyond 40 AU," Nature, Nature, vol. 407(6807), pages 979-981, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6807:d:10.1038_35039572
    DOI: 10.1038/35039572
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35039572
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35039572?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6807:d:10.1038_35039572. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.