Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
This project must be done by individuals.
In this class, I mentioned that the Kuiper Belt seems to have a big clump of objects with semi-major axes between about 35 and 50 AU. If you look at the graph in that lecture, you'll see that the edges of the clump are rather sharp.
Is it possible that Neptune is responsible for the sharp edges? Could its gravitational influence via resonant perturbations cause no Kuiper Belt objects to have orbits of certain sizes?
Q: What is the period of a body in a 1:2 resonance with Neptune?
Q: What is the semi-major axis of that body's orbit?
Q: Does that correspond to one of the "edges" of the
objects in the Kuiper Belt?
Write down the answers to these questions on a sheet of paper, showing all your work. Hand it in to the instructor before or at the start of class on Tuesday, November 13.
Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.