For the first time, scientists used the joint power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Some of these are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than they expected, and that the colors of these bodies followed the same relationships as their larger family members.

These objects are typically small, faint, icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. Most are more than 100 million times dimmer than objects visible to the unaided eye. In two complementary papers published Tuesday in The Astronomical Journal, teams analyzed the color, composition, and size distribution of 27 newly discovered tiny, dim TNOs. 

This class of small bodies offers the best view into an early stage of planet-building, when a disk of dust and pebbles in orbit around the Sun coalesced into city-sized “planetesimals” — the solid building blocks that clump together to form planets — but had not yet merged into full-sized worlds.  Beyond Neptune, this second stage never happened, leaving behind a frozen population of planetesimals.

In the deepest TNO survey to date, teams led by PhD candidates from the University of Victoria in Canada, under the guidance of the National Research Council of Canada, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff examined a patch of sky simultaneously with Hubble, observing the TNOs’ visible light, and Webb, observing their infrared light. The team of researchers measured the objects’ colors, which are like a fingerprint of the surface composition, as well as their sizes and determined their orbits. 

In the coordinated observations, the teams studied two different types of TNOs. The first, dynamically “cold” TNOs, are on their original, relatively circular orbits around the Sun in the plane of the solar system. The second type, dynamically “hot” TNOs, formed between the current locations of Uranus and Neptune but were pushed outward where they are today when the outer gas giants migrated early in the solar system’s history. Today they reside in highly elliptical orbits and move in and out of the plane of our solar system.

Prior to these observations, astronomers thought that small TNOs from both hot and cold populations would have undergone many collisions, changing their surfaces compared to larger TNOs. But that’s not what the observations showed. Instead, the small bodies look like their larger counterparts. This implies that collisions are not changing the surfaces significantly—perhaps because there are fewer collisions than expected, or because the TNOs somehow retain their primordial, pre-collision compositions. The teams are still trying to unravel this mystery.

“You could imagine a scenario where getting knocked around and fragmented would change the surface composition, and then you would see a different surface color for tiny TNOs compared to their larger siblings. So it’s really fascinating to see that the smallest objects are somehow ‘remembering’ and preserving the history of how they were made,” said Northern Arizona University PhD candidate Anastasia Morgan, who led the study of color and composition. 

“These dynamically ‘hot’ TNOs retain a signature of where they were born, even though they’ve been orbitally scrambled since then,” said co-author David Trilling of Northern Arizona University.

Both the “hot” and “cold” populations seem to keep the same colors as when they were formed, with little change since the birth of the solar system. 

The Webb data also allowed researchers to measure the number of objects of each size. They found that the overall size distributions for both populations were surprisingly similar.

“It’s very interesting that the process of planetesimal formation ends up producing the same distribution of sizes for both cold and hot populations, despite forming in different regions of the early solar system. The process seems to be insensitive to disk conditions, producing similar planetesimal sizes whether the disk is hot or cold, and dense or fluffy,” said University of Victoria PhD candidate Marielle Eduardo, who led the study on size distribution. 

Researchers also found fewer of these very small bodies than they expected based on some planet formation models. Webb discovered 27 new, remarkably dim TNOs, one so faint it is equivalent to standing on Earth and seeing a small swarm of fireflies on the Moon. The smallest one they observed has a diameter of about 3 miles (5 kilometers), which is about five times smaller than what is possible to detect with the most sensitive ground-based telescopes.

This project would not have been possible without Hubble and Webb working together to detect and characterize these TNOs. With Hubble’s sensitivity in visible light and Webb’s in infrared, the space telescopes provide more insights than either can on its own.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about NASA’s space telescopes, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/universe

Related Images & Videos

Trans-Neptunian Object Illustration

This artist’s concept depicts a Trans-Neptunian Object, a small, faint, icy body orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. These objects are so small that even with NASA’s Hubble and Webb space telescopes, they appear only as tiny points of light.

Tiny Worlds Discovered by Hubble and Webb

This video explains how Hubble and Webb are giving scientists a new look at some of the solar system’s oldest survivors and revealing new clues about how the building blocks of planets, including Earth, first formed.

Explore More

NASA’s Hubble Finds Kuiper Belt Duo May Be Trio

A team of researchers found a potential three-body system in the Kuiper Belt. The system, known as the Altjira, challenges traditional collision theories by suggesting that these triple systems might form directly from the gravitational collapse of material in the early solar disk.

NASA’s Webb Reveals the Ancient Surfaces of Trans-Neptunian Objects

Within the first two years of science operations, Webb took high-quality spectra of over 75 TNOs and provided the first comprehensive look at what they are made of.

Uncovering Icy Objects in the Kuiper Belt

Hubble observations of the outskirts of our solar system found a moon orbiting Makemake and several new moons around Pluto. These observations played a critical role in helping NASA plan the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto and beyond.

Hubble Harvests Distant Solar System Objects

Astronomers using clever techniques to cull the data archives of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added 14 new TNOs to the catalog. 

Kuiper Belt: Exploration

The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is home to Pluto and most of the known dwarf planets and some comets.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble’s most notable scientific discoveries reflect the broad range of research and the breakthroughs it has achieved.

Hubble Images

Explore Hubble’s iconic images of the universe, and view photos of mission operations and astronauts servicing Hubble in space.

Hubble News