Since we have now amassed dozens of new Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) discoveries, its time for some visualizations!
As part of our ongoing effort to characterize our current discoveries, as well as to prepare to make new discoveries, I have been developing a suite of software tools to organize and classify the measurements we have acquired – both those from our own internal efforts, as well as those contributed by hundreds of the Ice Hunters’ citizen scientists. We have obtained and catalogued approximately 800 unique observations of dozens of new Kuiper Belt Objects, with data taken from the Magellan 6.5m, Subaru 8m, and CFHT 3.5m observatories.
Part of my classification software includes estimating the close-approach trajectory of each discovered object with respect to the New Horizons spacecraft. It occurred to me that this could be turned into a neat animation – so here it is!
This animation shows the flight of the New Horizons spacecraft from 2010 to 2023 through this cloud of newly discovered Kuiper Belt Objects revealed by our search for a New Horizons post-Pluto encounter target. Each KBO’s position and motion has been computed from its best known orbit solution. For many objects these orbit solutions remain relatively uncertain, so the exact flyby geometry may change as we acquire new and better data.
[vimeo 45883622 w=500 h=281]
New Horizons Mission: Kuiper Belt Fly-Through from Alex Parker on Vimeo.
The yellow triangle indicates the position of the New Horizons spacecraft. The large cyan circle marks Pluto’s position. The small gray points are the new Kuiper Belt Objects we discovered in the 2011-2012 observing seasons, while the [purple] points are new Kuiper Belt Objects discovered in 2004-2005 observing season data by members of the public through the “Ice Hunters” citizen science effort.
The left panels show a top-down (i.e., from above the plane of the Earth’s orbit) and side-on view of the spacecraft trajectory and the Kuiper Belt Objects discovered in our survey so far. Distance scales from the Sun are illustrated with gray lines, and the pericentric (closest point to the Sun) and apocentric (farthest point from the Sun) distances of Uranus and Neptune are marked with dashed white lines.
The right panel shows the Kuiper Belt objects from the perspective of the New Horizons spacecraft on its actual trajectory, with the view rendered as facing directly outward from the Sun. The illustrated size of each KBO scales with distance from the spacecraft, but the sizes are not to scale (almost all of the Kuiper Belt Objects so far detected will be unresolved by the instruments onboard the spacecraft). For any Kuiper Belt object which passes within 2 AU of the spacecraft, the range in AU (1 AU = the average distance between the Earth and the Sun) is shown.
In the animation, a “flyby” sound is generated by the distance and flyby geometry of each object. Since there is no sound in space, this sound is there purely to enhance the impression of motion through the Kuiper Belt.
Two long-range flybys with Kuiper Belt Objects occur before the Pluto encounter, one late 2013 and one in early 2015. It may be possible for New Horizons to make distant observations of these two objects, though neither is large enough to be resolved.
The “cluster” of distant flybys that begins in June of 2018 is due to the passage of New Horizons into the “cold classical Kuiper Belt,” a region of space densely populated by Kuiper Belt Objects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Kuiper_belt_object
The hunt for ideal New Horizons encounter targets continues, and future versions of this animation will be updated as new Kuiper Belt objects are discovered.
Follow New Horizons on Twitter: @NewHorizons2015
Follow Alex Parker on Twitter: @Alex_Parker
Video Credits
Alex Harrison Parker – New Horizons Outer Solar System Science Fellow, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The 2011-2012 New Horizons Kuiper Belt Object search team & contributors
(alphabetical by first name)
Alan Stern, Brian McLeod, Cesar Fuentes, Darin Ragozzine, David Borncamp, David Osip, David Tholen, David Trilling, Francesca DeMeo, Jean-Marc Petit, JJ Kavelaars, John Spencer, Lawrence Wasserman, Marc Buie, Matthew Holman, Richard Binzel, Scott Sheppard, Sebastian Fabbro, Stephen Gwyn, and Susan Benecchi.
A partial list of Ice Hunters who contributed to the 2004-2005 discoveries can be found here. A full list of contributors will be forthcoming – we’re sorting in usernames to join the folks who released their real names).
User Charlie pointed out that the Ice Hunters points were mis-labeled in the description – this has been fixed! Thanks.
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Very, very cool!
I’m a little confused by:
“The small gray points are the new Kuiper Belt Objects we discovered in the 2011-2012 observing seasons, while the points are new Kuiper Belt Objects discovered in 2004-2005 observing season data by members of the public through the “Ice Hunters” citizen science effort.” Did you leave out “purple” in front of the second “points”? If so, it looks like we did a lot better job in finding “accessible” KBO’s in the second round!
Thanks for the cool visualization!
Thanks for pointing this out – you’re correct, its the “purple points” which were found by the Ice Hunters. The second search went much fainter, and it had the advantage of being later in time, so it only had to cover a small area of sky compared to the 2004-2005 survey.
Thank you for this presentation, it seem that one of those in the 2018 cluster were quite near.
Now I cannot say if that means that New horizons will be able to make a course change to actually fly past it, I did read somewhere that the ones you knew about some time ago, all were a bit too far.
So it would be nice to hear if that is the case – or if you’ll try to identify a better target even closer to the spacecraft path.
Some of those in the 2018-ish timeframe do get within about 0.16 AU of the spacecraft – however, since that would leave only three years between the Pluto encounter and the encounter date with these objects, we would need a change in velocity of roughly (0.16 AU)/(3 years) ~ 250 meters / second. The spacecraft has about 120 meters / second or so available, so we would not cover the total distance to these objects. If they were further out in the Kuiper Belt (so there was more time) or if they passed closer to the New Horizons trajectory, then we could reach them.
However, even though we can’t fly right up next to them, these objects that come close might be targeted for long range science observations from the spacecraft.
We’re still looking for other targets which fall within the 120 meters / second envelope.
Thank you for your comprehensive reply Alex Parker.
Yes I do guess that New Horizons can take spectra and light curves for several.
But as you hint at yourself, the big prize would be to have a close encounter with one, perhaps close enough for some images.
Well in my view it does not have to be one of the largest ones, so sure keep looking and we will hold our thumbs. 🙂