Chad Trujillo
Encyclopedia
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| Trans-Neptunian objects discovered: 12 | |
|---|---|
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| || November 3, 2002
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| (90377) Sedna || November 14, 2003
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| (90482) Orcus || February 17, 2004
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| || May 17, 2002
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| || July 26, 2003
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| || October 3, 2004
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| || December 18, 2001
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| || December 20, 2001
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| (136108) Haumea || December 28, 2004
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| (136472) Makemake || March 31, 2005
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| Eris
Eris (dwarf planet)
Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
|| January 8, 2005
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| colspan="2" style="font-size: smaller;" |
- with Michael E. BrownMichael E. BrownMichael E. Brown has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology since 2003....
- with David L. RabinowitzDavid L. RabinowitzDavid Lincoln Rabinowitz is a researcher at Yale University. He has built CCD cameras and software for the detection of near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects, and his research has helped reduce the assumed number of near-Earth asteroids by half, from 1,000-2,000 to 500-1,000 He has also...
- with Glenn Smith
- credit disputed by José Luis Ortiz MorenoJosé Luis Ortiz MorenoJosé Luis Ortiz Moreno is an astronomer, and former Vicedirector of Technology at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía , Spain. He leads a team working on minor solar system objects at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Granada, Spain....
et al.
|}
Chadwick A. "Chad" Trujillo (born 22 November 1973) is an astronomer and the co-discoverer of the dwarf planet
Dwarf planet
A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite...
Eris
Eris (dwarf planet)
Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
.
Trujillo works with computer software and has examined the orbits of the numerous trans-Neptunian object
Trans-Neptunian object
A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930...
s (TNOs), which is the outer area of the solar system that he specialized in. In late August 2005, it was announced that Trujillo, along with Michael E. Brown
Michael E. Brown
Michael E. Brown has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology since 2003....
and David L. Rabinowitz
David L. Rabinowitz
David Lincoln Rabinowitz is a researcher at Yale University. He has built CCD cameras and software for the detection of near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects, and his research has helped reduce the assumed number of near-Earth asteroids by half, from 1,000-2,000 to 500-1,000 He has also...
, had discovered Eris
Eris (dwarf planet)
Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
. As a result of the discovery of the satellite Dysnomia
Dysnomia (moon)
- References :...
, Eris was the first TNO known to be more massive than Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
.
Early career
Trujillo attended Oak Park and River Forest High SchoolOak Park and River Forest High School
Oak Park and River Forest High School, or OPRF, is a public four-year high school located in Oak Park, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It is the only school of Oak Park and River Forest District 200....
in Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...
. He received his B.Sc. in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1995, and was a member of the Xi chapter of Tau Epsilon Phi
Tau Epsilon Phi
Tau Epsilon Phi is an American fraternity with 14 active chapters, chiefly located at universities and colleges on the East Coast of the United States...
, and received his Ph.D. in astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
from the University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
in 2000.
Trujillo was later a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, and is currently an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory
Gemini Observatory
The Gemini Observatory is an astronomical observatory consisting of two telescopes at sites in Hawai‘i and Chile. Together, the twin Gemini telescopes provide almost complete coverage of both the northern and southern skies...
in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
http://www.uhf.hawaii.edu/uhalumni/Nupepa/August2005/stories.htm. He studies the Kuiper belt
Kuiper belt
The Kuiper belt , sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive...
and the outer solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
.
List of discoveries
He has discovered several trans-Neptunian objectTrans-Neptunian object
A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930...
s (TNOs). The last major TNO, Eris, was considered by him, his team, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, and many others to be the tenth planet, but the International Astronomical Union
International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union IAU is a collection of professional astronomers, at the Ph.D. level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy...
assigned it to the new dwarf planet
Dwarf planet
A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite...
and plutoid status.
The known plutoids are:
- Quaoar50000 Quaoar50000 Quaoar is a rocky trans-Neptunian object in the Kuiper belt with one known moon. Discovered on June 4, 2002 by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown at the California Institute of Technology from images acquired at the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory, it is thought by...
(with Brown) - Sedna90377 Sedna90377 Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2003, which was about three times as far from the Sun as Neptune. For most of its orbit it is even further from the Sun, with its aphelion estimated at 960 astronomical units , making it one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System...
(with Brown and Rabinowitz), possibly the first known inner Oort cloudOort cloudThe Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...
object - Orcus90482 Orcus90482 Orcus is a trans-Neptunian object in the Kuiper belt with a large moon. It was discovered on February 17, 2004 by Michael Brown of Caltech, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University. Precovery images as early as November 8, 1951 were later identified...
(with Brown and Rabinowitz) - ErisEris (dwarf planet)Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
(with Brown and Rabinowitz), the only known TNO more massive than Pluto