Extremely red Kuiper-belt objects in near-circular orbits beyond 40 AU

S. C. Tegler () and W. Romanishin
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S. C. Tegler: Department of Physics & Astronomy Northern Arizona University
W. Romanishin: Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Oklahoma

Nature, 2000, vol. 407, issue 6807, 979-981

Abstract: Abstract Kuiper-belt objects (KBOs) are an ancient reservoir of comets beyond Neptune's orbit1,2. Some of these objects were recently found to have the reddest optical colours in the Solar System3, but the number of objects for which accurate colours were available was too small for any correlation to be discerned between colour and physical or dynamical properties, which might shed light on the origin of these objects. Here we report that all nine of the KBOs in our survey on near-circular (low-eccentricity) orbits with perihelion distances larger than 40 AU have extremely red surfaces, thereby connecting an observable property with a dynamical class. Of the objects with orbital eccentricities greater than 0.1, about half are also very red, while the rest have colours similar to the Sun, meaning that reflected sunlight is not strongly modified by the objects' surface properties. In addition, of the 13 ‘classical’ KBOs (those with semimajor axis a ≈ 45 AU and eccentricity e

Date: 2000
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DOI: 10.1038/35039572

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