Scattered Disc - Discovery

Discovery

See also: History of the Kuiper belt

During the 1980s, the introduction of the charge-coupled device in telescopes in combination with higher-capacity computers for image analysis allowed for more efficient deep-sky surveys than was practical using photography. This led to a flood of new discoveries: between 1992 and 2006, over a thousand trans-Neptunian objects were detected.

The first scattered-disc object to be recognised as such was 1996 TL66, originally identified in 1996 by astronomers based at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Three more were identified by the same survey in 1999: 1999 CV118, 1999 CY118, and 1999 CF119. The first object presently classified as an SDO to be discovered was 1995 TL8, found in 1995 by Spacewatch.

As of 2011, over 200 SDOs have been identified, including 2007 UK126 (discovered by Schwamb, Brown, and Rabinowitz), 2002 TC302 (NEAT), Eris (Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz), Sedna (Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz) and 2004 VN112 (Deep Ecliptic Survey). Although the numbers of objects in the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc are hypothesized to be roughly equal, observational bias due to their greater distance means that far fewer SDOs have been observed to date.

Read more about this topic:  Scattered Disc

Famous quotes containing the word discovery:

    “One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    “Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
    —Max Lerner (b. 1902)

    “However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)