Debris I: Asteroids

• Distribution and Orbits
  • Inner Solar System objects plotted
  • Main Belt objects: Ceres and Vesta lineup, Gaspara, Ida & Dactyl
  • Near-Earth objects
  • orbits seen from top vs side
  • current events: asteroid collision detected
• Earth infall: meteors: Leonids, one fireball, another, and another, Peekskill meteor video
• Structure: NEAR Mission to asteroid Eros:
  Eros overview, rotation movie, zoom, extreme closeup composition

Debris II: Comets

• Hyakutake, West, Ikeya Seki
• McNaught--brightest comet in decades! perihelion last month! over Catalonia, near Sun, over New Zealand
• HST Hale-Bopp coma
• Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Jupiter
• Sun-grazing comets (SOHO): image, movie
• Structure
• Tail direction (SS orbit viewer), a particularly striking example
• Kuiper Belt: current data plotted
• Oort Cloud

Pluto, Eris, and Planethood

• Charon discovery image (1978) HST image (1994), Pluto surface (2001), yet more moons (2006)
• Quaoar, Sedna, and finally: Eris (nee Xena)
• votes are in: IAU resolution demoting Pluto

Origin of the Solar System

• Theory building
• Prosolar nebula (molecular cloud in the Eagle Nebula)
• ingredients: gas and dust
• Protoplanetary disk
• The rise of planets