Big KBO got a face-lift Quaoar, an icy minor planet in the
Kuiper Belt with half the size of Pluto, shows a surprisingly
young face hinting at volcanic activity. December 9, 2004
|December 9, 2004| The second-largest object orbiting in the
Kuiper Belt, Quaoar, was resurfaced in the last 10 million
years, say planetary scientists David Jewitt and Jane Luu. They
suggest either impacts dredged up comparatively fresh ice from
Quaoar's interior — or low-temperature volcanic outgassing gave
it a new coating. Using the Subaru 8-meter telescope on Mauna
Kea, Jewitt (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii) and
Luu (Lincoln Laboratory, MIT) took visual and infrared spectra
of Quaoar, which orbits at an average distance of 43.3
astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. (Earth orbits at 1 AU.)
Quaoar has a diameter of 780 miles (1,260 kilometers), making it
more than half the size of Pluto and slightly larger than
Pluto's moon, Charon. Jewitt and Luu discovered the first Kuiper
Belt object in 1992, and roughly 1,000 m