Link: "Some big moons in the Kuiper belt"
Mar. 2nd, 2019 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorra posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
astronomy(Cross-posted to my own journal)
There's a neat post by Emily Lakdawalla about "Some big moons in the Kuiper belt" It's a year old, but I just read it recently.
It talks about how Eris's moon Dysnomia and Orcus's moon Vanth are bigger than previously thought. This means that they are also darker in colour than previously thought - a bigger surface must be darker-coloured to produce the same brightness from earth that we see.
This ends up meaning that Eris and Dysnomia are almost opposites in brightness: Eris reflects 99% of the light that falls on it, while Dysnomia reflects around 4%, making it darker than coal!
There's a neat post by Emily Lakdawalla about "Some big moons in the Kuiper belt" It's a year old, but I just read it recently.
It talks about how Eris's moon Dysnomia and Orcus's moon Vanth are bigger than previously thought. This means that they are also darker in colour than previously thought - a bigger surface must be darker-coloured to produce the same brightness from earth that we see.
This ends up meaning that Eris and Dysnomia are almost opposites in brightness: Eris reflects 99% of the light that falls on it, while Dysnomia reflects around 4%, making it darker than coal!
