AT THE EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Icy New Worlds Unveiled

Alain Doressoundiram and Emmanuel Lellouch

On August 24, 2006, the Solar System lost its ninth planet! Pluto - long considered an atypical planet - is now officially classified as a ‘dwarf planet,’ and is the most famous representative of the hundreds of new objects, some of them over a thousand kilometers in diameter, which have been detected beyond Neptune.

The discovery of the Kuiper Belt has transformed our perception of the Solar System, and its study has become one of the most active branches of planetology. What we are finding provides us little by little with the key to subjects as diverse and fundamental as the troubled history of the Solar System, its ‘architecture,’ the origin of comets, and even the formation of lunar craters.

At the Edge of the Solar System brings together amazing findings from the cutting edge of research. Illustrated throughout with magnificent color images, the book explains the importance of the small bodies in the outer Solar System and also shows the interrelations between them and sets them in context with planets in the inner Solar System. It looks at what they can tell us about the origins and evolution not only of our own Solar System but of planetary systems around other stars.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Foreword

The Solar System from antiquity to 1930
Pluto: 80 years of exploration from afar
First steps on a road of extraordinary discovery
A jumble of orbits
New worlds unveiled
9 + 1 = 8!
A history of the outer Solar System (and of the Moon!)
Tomorrow, here and elsewhere...

Appendices
A. Identity cards from some 'star' objects
B. The eight planets of the Solar System
Bibliography
Glossary
Index

Extent: 216 pages, in full colour
Binding: Paperback
Published: 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4419-0864-3

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