相关论文: Color, Composition, and Thermal Environment of Kui…
The Cold Classical Kuiper Belt, a class of small bodies in undisturbed orbits beyond Neptune, are primitive objects preserving information about Solar System formation. The New Horizons spacecraft flew past one of these objects, the 36 km…
We discuss in a thermodynamic, geologically empirical way the long-term nature of the stable majority ices that could be present in Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 after its 4.6 Gyr residence in the EKB as a cold classical object. Considering…
Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) represent some of the most ancient remnants of our solar system, having evaded significant thermal or evolutionary processing. This makes them important targets for exploration as they offer a unique opportunity…
The Kuiper Belt is a distant region of the Solar System. On 1 January 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close to (486958) 2014 MU69, a Cold Classical Kuiper Belt Object, a class of objects that have never been heated by the Sun and are…
On January 1st 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the classical Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth (provisionally designated 2014 MU69), possibly the most primitive object ever explored by a spacecraft. The I/F of Arrokoth is…
The New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) (486958) Arrokoth revealed a bilobed shape with highly flattened lobes both aligned to its equatorial plane, and a rotational axis almost aligned to the orbital plane…
One of the most striking and curious features of the small Kuiper Belt Object (KB), Arrokoth, explored by New Horizons, is the bright, annular neck it exhibits at the junction between its two lobes. Here we summarize past reported findings…
The New Horizons space probe led the first close flyby of one of the most primordial and distant objects left over from the formation of the solar system, the contact binary Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, which is composed of two…
A near surface thermal model for Arrokoth is developed based on the recently released $10^5$ facet model of the body. This thermal solution takes into account Arrokoth's surface re-radiation back onto itself. The solution method exploits…
The New Horizons spacecraft's encounter with the cold classical Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth (formerly 2014 MU69) revealed a contact-binary planetesimal. We investigate how it formed, finding it is the product of a gentle, low-speed…
We propose a chemical and dynamical process to explain the surface colors of the Kuiper belt. In our hypothesis, the initial bulk compositions of the bodies themselves can be quite diverse -- as is seen in comets -- but the early surface…
Flyby images of (486958) Arrokoth (Ultima Thule, 2014 MU$_{69}$) show a comparatively bright "necklace" in the neck, or cleft between its two lobes, in contrast to its generally low albedo. We suggest that the necklace may be the result of…
The contact binary Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, targeted by New Horizons mission, has a unique slope pattern, which is a result of its irregular bilobate surface shape and high spin period. Thus, some peculiar topographic regions…
(Abridged) Thirty-three objects with possible origins beyond the Kuiper Belt edge, very high inclinations, very large semi-major axes or large perihelion distances were observed to determine their surface colors. All three objects that have…
Kuiper belt objects, such as Arrokoth, the probable progenitors of short-period comets, formed and evolved at large heliocentric distances, where the ambient temperatures appear to be sufficiently low for preserving volatile ices. By…
Objects in the Kuiper belt are small and far away thus difficult to study in detail even with the best telescopes available at earth. For much of the early history of the Kuiper belt, studies of the compositions of these objects were…
We report on a study of the mounds that dominate the appearance of Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) (486958) Arrokoth's larger lobe, named Wenu. We compare the geological context of these mounds, measure and intercompare their shapes,…
We have rereduced Spitzer IRS spectra and reanalyzed the SED's of three nearby debris disks: lambda Boo, HD 139664, and HR 8799. We find that that the thermal emission from these objects is well modeled using two single temperature black…
Here we present an updated shape model of (486958) Arrokoth, the bilobate Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) which the NASA New Horizons spacecraft flew past in 2019. This updated shape model uses all of the resolved images of Arrokoth obtained by…
The New Horizons mission has returned stunning images of the bilobate Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth. It is a contact binary, formed from two intact and relatively undisturbed predecessor objects joined by a narrow contact region. We…