Planets and Moons Universe ID: 10635

Dust Simulations Paint Alien's View of the Solar System

Released on September 23, 2010

Dust ground off icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt, the cold-storage zone that includes Pluto and millions of other objects, creates a faint infrared disk potentially visible to alien astronomers looking for planets around the sun. Neptune's gravitational imprint on the dust is always detectable in new simulations of how this dust moves through the solar system. By ramping up the collision rate, the simulations show how the distant view of the solar system might have changed over its history. More here.

These images, produced by computer models that track the movement of icy grains, represent infrared snapshots of Kuiper Belt dust as seen by a distant observer. For the first time, the models include the effects of collisions among grains. By ramping up the collision rate, the simulations show how the distant view of the solar system might have changed over its history.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Marc Kuchner and Christopher Stark

Simulated images of the ancient Kuiper Belt bear a striking resemblance to this Hubble Space Telescope view of the dusty ring around Fomalhaut, a young star located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. In 2008, Hubble spotted a planet orbiting inside the ring. The bright central star is masked out so that the faint ring can be seen.

Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (Univ. of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

For More Information

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dust-model.html

Credits

Chris Smith (HTSI): Animator
Scott Wiessinger (UMBC): Animator
Christopher Stark (University of Maryland College Park): Interviewee
Chris Smith (HTSI): Narrator
Scott Wiessinger (UMBC): Producer
Christopher Stark (University of Maryland College Park): Scientist
Marc Kuchner (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Graphics

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. However, each image should be credited as indicated above.