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© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.
The Solar SySTem

Uranus, Neptune,
Pluto,
and the Outer Solar System
Revised Edition

Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 In memory of my brother Thomas Turner Elkins,
who, when I was 10 years old, taught me about the Oort cloud,
and together we named our pet mouse Oort.
      

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System, Revised Edition

Copyright © 2011, 2006 by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact:

Facts On File, Inc.

An imprint of Infobase Publishing
132 West 31st Street
New York NY 10001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Elkins-Tanton, Linda T.
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the outer solar system / Linda T. Elkins-Tanton ; foreword, Maria T. Zuber—
Rev. ed.
   p. cm.— (The solar system)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8160-7701-4 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4381-3408-6 (e-book)
1. Uranus (Planet) 2. Neptune (Planet) 3. Pluto (Dwarf planet) 4. Solar system I. Title.
QB681.E45 2011
523.47—dc22 2010003273

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associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York
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Excerpts included herewith have been reprinted by permission of the copyright holders; the author has made
every effort to contact copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to rectify, in future editions, any errors or
omissions brought to their notice.

Text design by Annie O’Donnell

Composition by Hermitage Publishing Services
Illustrations by Dale Williams
Photo research by Elizabeth H. Oakes
Cover printed by Bang Printing, Brainerd, Minn.
Book printed and bound by Bang Printing, Brainerd, Minn.
Date printed: November 2010
Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

Contents
Foreword vi
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction xv

PART ONE: URANUS AND NEPTUNE 1

1 Uranus: Fast Facts about a Planet in Orbit 3
Fundamental Information about Uranus 8
What Makes Gravity? 11

2 The Interior of Uranus 14

Composition 14
What Is Pressure? 17
Internal Temperatures 19
Elements and Isotopes 20
Magnetic Field 22

3 Surface Appearance and Conditions on Uranus 24

Remote Sensing 30

4 Rings and Moons of Uranus 39

Rings 39
Why Are There Rings? 42
Moons 44
What Are Synchronous Orbits and Synchronous Rotation? 48
Accretion and Heating: Why Are Some Solar System Objects
Round and Others Irregular? 52

5 Neptune: Fast Facts about a Planet in Orbit 65

Fundamental Information about Neptune 67

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

6 The Interior of Neptune 78
Sabine Stanley and Planetary Magnetic Fields 81

7 Surface Appearance and Conditions on Neptune 85

8 Neptune’s Rings and Moons 90

Rings 91
Moons 94
Fossa, Sulci, and Other Terms for Planetary Landforms 102

PART TWO: PLUTO AND THE KUIPER BELT 107

9 The Discovery of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt 109

10 Pluto: Fast Facts about a Dwarf Planet in Orbit 115

Fundamental Information about Pluto 117

1 1 What Little Is Known about Pluto’s Interior and Surface 120

How the Discovery of Eris Caused Pluto to Lose Its Status
as a Planet 123
The New Horizons Mission to Pluto 131

12 Charon: Pluto’s Moon, or Its Companion Dwarf Planet? 138

13 The Rest of the Kuiper Belt Population 142

Numbering and Naming Small Bodies 146

14 The Nice Model for Kuiper Belt Formation 165

PART THREE: BEYOND THE KUIPER BELT 173

15 The Oort Cloud 175

16 Conclusions: The Known and the Unknown 183

Appendix 1: Units and Measurements 191

Fundamental Units 191
Comparisons among Kelvin, Celsius, and Fahrenheit 194

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 Useful Measures of Distance 195
Definitions for Electricity and Magnetism 200
Prefixes 203

Appendix 2: Light, Wavelength, and Radiation 204

Appendix 3: A List of all Known Moons 214

Glossary 217
Further Resources 228
Index 236

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

Foreword

W hile I was growing up, I got my thrills from simple

things—one was the beauty of nature. I spent hours
looking at mountains, the sky, lakes, et cetera, and always
seeing something different. Another pleasure came from fig-
uring out how things work and why things are the way they
are. I remember constantly looking up things from why air-
planes fly to why it rains to why there are seasons. Finally was
the thrill of discovery. The excitement of finding or learning
about something new—like when I found the Andromeda
galaxy for the first time in a telescope—was a feeling that
could not be beat.
Linda Elkins-Tanton’s multivolume set of books about the
solar system captures all of these attributes. Far beyond a laun-
dry list of facts about the planets, the Solar System is a set that
provides elegant descriptions of natural objects that celebrate
their beauty, explains with extraordinary clarity the diverse
processes that shaped them, and deftly conveys the thrill of
space exploration. Most people, at one time or another, have
come across astronomical images and marveled at complex
and remarkable features that seemingly defy explanation. But
as the philosopher Aristotle recognized, “Nature does noth-
ing uselessly,” and each discovery represents an opportunity
to expand human understanding of natural worlds. To great
effect, these books often read like a detective story, in which
the 4.5-billion year history of the solar system is reconstructed
by integrating simple concepts of chemistry, physics, geology,
meteorology, oceanography, and even biology with computer
simulations, laboratory analyses, and the data from the myr-
iad of space missions.
Starting at the beginning, you will learn why it is pretty
well understood that the solar system started as a vast, tenu-

vi
© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.
 Foreword vii

ous ball of gas and dust that flattened to a disk with most of
the mass—the future Sun—at the center. Much less certain is
the transition from a dusty disk to the configuration with the
planets, moons, asteroids, and comets that we see today. An
ironic contrast is the extraordinary detail in which we under-
stand some phenomena, like how rapidly the planets formed,
and how depressingly uncertain we are about others, like how
bright the early Sun was.
Once the planets were in place, the story diverges into a
multitude of fascinating subplots. The oldest planetary sur-
faces preserve the record of their violent bombardment his-
tory. Once dismissed as improbable events, we now know that
the importance of planetary impacts cannot be overstated.
One of the largest of these collisions, by a Mars-sized body
into the Earth, was probably responsible for the formation of
the Earth’s Moon, and others may have contributed to extinc-
tion of species on Earth. The author masterfully explains in
unifying context the many other planetary processes, such
as volcanism, faulting, the release of water and other volatile
elements from the interiors of the planets to form atmospheres
and oceans, and the mixing of gases in the giant planets to
drive their dynamic cloud patterns.
Of equal interest is the process of discovery that brought
our understanding of the solar system to where it is today.
While robotic explorers justifiably make headlines, much of
our current knowledge has come from individuals who spent
seemingly endless hours in the cold and dark observing the
night skies or in labs performing painstakingly careful analy-
ses on miniscule grains from space. Here, these stories of perse-
verance and skill receive the attention they so richly deserve.
Some of the most enjoyable aspects of these books are the
numerous occasions in which simple but confounding ques-
tions are explained in such a straightforward manner that you
literally feel like you knew it all along. How do you know
what is inside a planetary body if you cannot see there? What
makes solar system objects spherical as opposed to irregular
in shape? What causes the complex, changing patterns at the
top of Jupiter’s atmosphere? How do we know what Saturn’s
rings are made of?

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

viii Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System

When it comes right down to it, all of us are inherently

explorers. The urge to understand our place on Earth and the
extraordinary worlds beyond is an attribute that makes us
uniquely human. The discoveries so lucidly explained in these
volumes are perhaps most remarkable in the sense that they
represent only the tip of the iceberg of what yet remains to be
discovered.
—Maria T. Zuber, Ph.D.
E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics
Head of the Department of Earth,
Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 Preface

O n August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union

(IAU) changed the face of the solar system by dictating
that Pluto is no longer a planet. Though this announcement
raised a small uproar in the public, it heralded a new era of
how scientists perceive the universe. Our understanding of
the solar system has changed so fundamentally that the origi-
nal definition of planet requires profound revisions.
While it seems logical to determine the ranking of celes-
tial bodies by size (planets largest, then moons, and finally
asteroids), in reality that has little to do with the process. For
example, Saturn’s moon Titan is larger than the planet Mer-
cury, and Charon, Pluto’s moon, is almost as big as Pluto itself.
Instead, scientists have created specific criteria to determine
how an object is classed. However, as telescopes increase their
range and computers process images with greater clarity, new
information continually challenges the current understanding
of the solar system.
As more distant bodies are discovered, better theories for
their quantity and mass, their origins, and their relation to
the rest of the solar system have been propounded. In 2005, a
body bigger than Pluto was found and precipitated the argu-
ment: Was it the 10th planet or was, in fact, Pluto not even a
planet itself? Because we have come to know that Pluto and its
moon, Charon, orbit in a vast cloud of like objects, calling it
a planet no longer made sense. And so, a new class of objects
was born: the dwarf planets.
Every day, new data streams back to Earth from satel-
lites and space missions. Early in 2004, scientists proved that
standing liquid water once existed on Mars, just a month after
a mission visited a comet and discovered that the material in
its nucleus is as strong as some rocks and not the loose pile of

ix
© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.
x URANUS, NEPTUNE, PLUTO, AND THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

ice and dust expected. The MESSENGER mission to Mercury,

launched in 2004, has thus far completed three flybys and will
enter Mercury orbit at 2011. The mission has already proven
that Mercury’s core is still molten, raising fundamental ques-
tions about processes of planetary evolution, and it has sent
back to Earth intriguing information about the composition of
Mercury’s crust. Now the New Horizons mission is on its way
to make the first visit to Pluto and the Kuiper belt. Information
arrives from space observations and Earth-based experiments,
and scientists attempt to explain what they see, producing a
stream of new hypotheses about the formation and evolution
of the solar system and all its parts.
The graph below shows the number of moons each planet
has; large planets have more than small planets, and every
year scientists discover new bodies orbiting the gas giant
planets. Many bodies of substantial size orbit in the aster-
oid belt, or the Kuiper belt, and many sizable asteroids cross
The mass of the planet
appears to control the
the orbits of planets as they make their way around the Sun.
number of moons it has; Some planets’ moons are unstable and will in the near future
the large outer planets (geologically speaking) make new ring systems as they crash
have more moons than into their hosts. Many moons, like Neptune’s giant Triton,
the smaller inner planets. orbit their planets backward (clockwise when viewed from

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 Preface xi

the North Pole, the opposite way that the planets orbit the
Sun). Triton also has the coldest surface temperature of any
moon or planet, including Pluto, which is much farther from
the Sun. The solar system is made of bodies in a continuum of
sizes and ages, and every rule of thumb has an exception.
Perhaps more important, the solar system is not a static
place. It continues to evolve—note the drastic climate changes
we are experiencing on Earth as just one example—and our
ability to observe it continues to evolve, as well. Just five plan-
ets visible to the naked eye were known to ancient peoples:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Romans gave
these planets the names they are still known by today. Mer-
cury was named after their god Mercury, the fleet-footed
messenger of the gods, because the planet Mercury seems
especially swift when viewed from Earth. Venus was named
for the beautiful goddess Venus, brighter than anything in
the sky except the Sun and Moon. The planet Mars appears
red even from Earth and so was named after Mars, the god
of war. Jupiter is named for the king of the gods, the biggest
and most powerful of all, and Saturn was named for Jupiter’s
father. The ancient Chinese and the ancient Jews recognized
the planets as well, and the Maya (250–900 c.e., Mexico and
environs) and Aztec (~1100–1700 c.e., Mexico and environs)
knew Venus by the name Quetzalcoatl, after their god of good
and light, who eventually also became their god of war.
Science is often driven forward by the development of
new technology, allowing researchers to make measurements
that were previously impossible. The dawn of the new age in
astronomy and study of the solar system occurred in 1608,
when Hans Lippenshey, a Dutch eyeglass-maker, attached a
lens to each end of a hollow tube and thus created the first
telescope. Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564, made his
first telescope in 1609 from Lippenshey’s model. Galileo soon
discovered that Venus has phases like the Moon does and that
Saturn appeared to have “handles.” These were the edges of
Saturn’s rings, though the telescope was not strong enough to
resolve the rings correctly. In 1610, Galileo discovered four of
Jupiter’s moons, which are still called the Galilean satellites.
These four moons were the proof that not every heavenly
body orbited the Earth as Ptolemy, a Greek philosopher, had

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

xII URANUS, NEPTUNE, PLUTO, AND THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

Obliquity, orbital asserted around 140 c.e. Galileo’s discovery was the begin-
inclination, and rotation ning of the end of the strongly held belief that the Earth is the
direction are three center of the solar system, as well as a beautiful example of a
physical measurements case where improved technology drove science forward.
used to describe a The concept of the Earth-centered solar system is long
rotating, orbiting body.
gone, as is the notion that the heavenly spheres are unchang-
ing and perfect. Looking down on the solar system from above
the Sun’s north pole, the planets orbiting the Sun can be seen
to be orbiting counterclockwise, in the manner of the original
protoplanetary disk of material from which they formed. (This
is called prograde rotation.) This simple statement, though, is
almost the end of generalities about the solar system. Some
planets and dwarf planets spin backward compared to the
Earth, other planets are tipped over, and others orbit outside
the ecliptic plane by substantial angles, Pluto in particular (see
the following figure on obliquity and orbital inclination). Some
planets and moons are still hot enough to be volcanic, and
some produce silicate lava (for example, the Earth and Jupi-

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 Preface xiii

ter’s moon Io), while others have exotic lavas made of molten
ices (for example, Neptune’s moon Triton).
Today, we look outside our solar system and find planets
orbiting other stars, more than 400 to date. Now our search for
signs of life goes beyond Mars and Enceladus and Titan and
reaches to other star systems. Most of the science presented in
this set comes from the startlingly rapid developments of the
last 100 years, brought about by technological development.
The rapid advances of planetary and heliospheric science
and the astonishing plethora of images sent back by missions
motivate the revised editions of the Solar System set. The mul-
tivolume set explores the vast and enigmatic Sun at the center
of the solar system and moves out through the planets, dwarf
planets, and minor bodies of the solar system, examining each
and comparing them from the point of view of a planetary sci-
entist. Space missions that produced critical data for the under-
standing of solar system bodies are introduced in each volume,
and their data and images shown and discussed. The revised
editions of The Sun, Mercury, and Venus, The Earth and the
Moon, and Mars place emphasis on the areas of unknowns and
the results of new space missions. The important fact that the
solar system consists of a continuum of sizes and types of bod-
ies is stressed in the revised edition of Asteroids, Meteorites,
and Comets. This book discusses the roles of these small bodies
as recorders of the formation of the solar system, as well as their
threat as impactors of planets. In the revised edition of Jupiter
and Saturn, the two largest planets are described and compared.
In the revised edition of Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer
Solar System, Pluto is presented in its rightful, though complex,
place as the second-largest known of a extensive population of
icy bodies that reach far out toward the closest stars, in effect
linking the solar system to the Galaxy itself.
This set hopes to change the familiar and archaic litany
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Nep-
tune, Pluto into a thorough understanding of the many sizes
and types of bodies that orbit the Sun. Even a cursory study
of each planet shows its uniqueness along with the great areas
of knowledge that are unknown. These titles seek to make the
familiar strange again.

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

Acknowledgments

F oremost, profound thanks to the following organiza-

tions for the great science and adventure they provide for
humankind and, on a more prosaic note, for allowing the use
of their images for these books: the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in conjunction with
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Malin Space Science
Systems (MSSS). A large number of missions and their teams
have provided invaluable data and images, including the Solar
and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO), Mars Global Surveyor
(MGS), Mars Odyssey, the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs),
Galileo, Stardust, Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR),
and Cassini. Special thanks to Steele Hill, SOHO Media Spe-
cialist at NASA, who prepared a number of images from the
SOHO mission, to the astronauts who took the photos found
at Astronaut Photography of the Earth, and to the providers
of the National Space Science Data Center, Great Images in
NASA, and the NASA/JPL Planetary Photojournal, all avail-
able on the Web (addresses given in the reference section).
Many thanks also to Frank K. Darmstadt, executive editor;
to Jodie Rhodes, literary agent; and to E. Marc Parmentier at
Brown University for his generous support.

xiv
© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.
Introduction

U ranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System, Revised

Edition enters the farthest reaches of the solar system,
including the distant gas planets Uranus and Neptune and the
regions of asteroids and comets known as the Kuiper belt and
the Oort cloud. These are the areas in the solar system that,
in many ways, are the least known, and experiencing some
of the fastest rates of new discovery. Unlike all the planets
closer to the Sun, known since antiquity, the farthest reaches
are the discoveries of the modern world: Uranus was discov-
ered in 1781, Neptune in 1846, Pluto in 1930, the Kuiper belt
group of objects in 1992, and though the Oort cloud has been
theorized since 1950, its first member was just found in 2004.
The discovery of the outer planets made such an impression
on the minds of humankind that they were even immortal-
ized in the names of newly discovered elements: uranium,
neptunium, and plutonium, that astonishingly deadly con-
stituent of atomic bombs.
Scientific theories rely on observations that produce data:
temperatures, compositions, densities, sizes, times, patterns, or
appearances. There is very little data on these outer solar sys-
tem bodies, compared to what is known about Earth’s neigh-
bors the Moon and Mars, and even Jupiter and Saturn. In the
cases of Neptune and Uranus, only the mission of Voyager 2 dur-
ing the mid-1980s attempted close observations. The extreme
distance of these bodies from the Earth hinders Earth-based
observations. Because there is so little data on Uranus, there
are fewer scientists conducting research on the planet (they
have little data for analysis and hypotheses testing). Much of
the new science on this part of the solar system awaits new
space missions to this region. The discrepancy in missions to
the terrestrial planets compared to the outer planets is shown

xv
© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.
xvi Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System

The approximate number in the figure above; only Pluto has never had a space mission
of successful space approach it.
missions from all nations Pluto and its neighbors will finally be visited by the New
to each of the planets Horizons mission to the outer planets. The spacecraft, launched
and the Moon shows in 2006, will reach Pluto in 2015. This volume is updated with
that the Moon is by far
the state of knowledge of the outer reaches of the solar system,
the most visited body,
ready for the flood of new data to come from this mission.
only Pluto has had no
Part One of the book discusses what data there is on the
missions, and Mercury is
as neglected as Uranus
distant gas planets and investigates theories about their forma-
and Neptune. The tion and evolution. All the gas giant planets, including Uranus
definition of a successful and Neptune, are thought to have accumulated as masses of
mission is arguable, so heterogeneous material. The small amount of very dense mate-
totals for Mars and the rial available so far out in the nebular cloud of the early solar
Moon in particular may system fell through self-gravity into the center of each primor-
be disputed. dial planetary mass, forming whatever rocky or metallic core
each planet might now have. The liquid and gaseous mate-
rial that makes up the vast bulk of each planet forms layers
according to its response to pressure and temperature. Though

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

 Introduction xvii

these planets have relatively low density, the heat of formation

may still be influencing their interior circulation today.
Neptune and Uranus are twins in terms of size, internal
structure, and color, but they differ in important ways. Ura-
nus, for example, produces virtually no heat internally, while
Neptune produces more heat relative to what it receives from
the Sun than does any other planet. They both pose special
challenges to theories of planet formation. These are huge
planets, 15 and 17 times the mass of Earth, respectively, and
yet they formed in the outer solar system where the density
of material in the early solar system is thought to be very low
and the orbits are huge, leading to less chance of collisions
and collection of material. One theory is that both planets
formed in the region of Jupiter and Saturn and were scattered
outward in the solar system when Jupiter became huge and
acquired its giant gas envelope.
Neptune and Uranus also have huge cores in relation to
their overall planetary mass: probably 60 to 80 percent, as
compared to Jupiter and Saturn’s 3 to 15 percent. The ques-
tion then is, how did huge cores form, and then fail to attract
gravitationally the same fractions of gaseous atmospheres that
Jupiter and Saturn did? One possibility, in contradiction to
the idea that they formed near Jupiter and Saturn and then
were thrown further out, is that Uranus and Neptune formed
in the orbits they now inhabit. These planets’ orbits are so
huge and the protoplanetary disk so sparse at those distances
from the Sun that the planetary cores would have taken a long
time to form, much longer than Jupiter’s and Saturn’s.
Thus, very little is known about these remote gas giants,
both because data is scarce and because scientists are still
forming ideas about how they were created. Yet as remote as
these two planets are, there is much remaining material farther
out in the solar system still to be studied. Beyond the last two
gas giant planets lie fascinating small bodies in closely spaced
orbits, the home of Pluto and Charon, and the sources of long-
period comets. Data on more distant and smaller objects is
even more difficult to obtain. The fact that Pluto and its moon
Charon are part of a much larger population of icy and rocky
bodies now known as the Kuiper belt has been known for

© 2011 Facts on File . All Rights Reserved.

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