NASA’s Webb Reveals the Ancient Surfaces of Trans-Neptunian Objects
Some exciting new developments on TNOs (Trans-Neptunian objects), from NASA:
Of the TNOs whose orbits were perturbed during giant-planet migration, it is difficult to trace them back to where they formed. Yet it is only by studying the composition of individual TNOs that we can hope to map out the composition of the primordial outer disk. TNOs are on very distant orbits from the Sun, and are very cold, below minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 170 degrees Celsius), so their surfaces could provide information about the original composition of planetesimals within the disk. Webb is the first observatory able to provide detailed compositional information about typical TNOs (with diameters less than about 500 miles, or 800 kilometers) because of its large primary mirror and highly sensitive instruments. In particular, the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) has for the first time revealed TNO compositions in exquisite detail.
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