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NASA Space Earth Sun Microsystems News Science Technology

New Dwarf Planet Discovered In Outer Solar System (seeker.com) 119

astroengine quotes a report from Seeker: Astronomers have found another Pluto-like dwarf planet located about 20 times farther away from the sun than Neptune. The small planet, dubbed 2015 RR245, is estimated to be about 435 miles in diameter and flying in an elliptical, 700-year orbit around the sun. At closest approach, RR245 will be about 3.1 billion miles from the sun, a milestone it is expected to next reach in 2096. At its most distant point, the icy world is located about 7.5 billion miles away. It was found by a joint team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Maunakea, Hawaii, in images taken in September 2015 and analyzed in February. The discovery was announced on Monday in the Minor Planet Electronic Circular.
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New Dwarf Planet Discovered In Outer Solar System

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  • Nibiru? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    THis could possibly be Nibiru, finally. Hoagland vindicated.

    • Probably not. Nibiru is closer than that. The new dwarf planet is exactly where the UK will be in a few months.
  • by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @02:44AM (#52494999) Homepage

    More details (with animated gif) here: http://cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news... [hawaii.edu]
    (include measurements in SI units)

  • Not 20 times farther (Score:5, Informative)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @03:28AM (#52495101)

    located about 20 times farther away from the sun than Neptune

    It's perihelion is only 34 AU, aphelion 120 AU. Ie, it's between 1.13 and 4 times as far as Neptune.

    • I noticed that issue as well. Googleing for Neptune, shows it is roughly 2.8 billion miles from the sun, and this new object is stated to range from 3.1 billion to 7.5 billion.

      I don't know where they get the 20 factor.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      It's perihelion is only 34 AU, aphelion 120 AU. Ie, it's between 1.13 and 4 times as far as Neptune.

      Which unfortunately makes it a lot less interesting. I was hoping that they'd found a new sednoid. This planet has been almost certainly scattered by Neptune, rather than some undiscovered distant object.

      Still, it really drives the point home about how little we know about our own solar system, given that we're still finding things this large, this close. Our ability to detect them is based on how much lig

    • ... it's getting closer by the second [rochdaleherald.co.uk]
  • does it run Linux ?

  • With a diameter of 435 miles, the surface area is almost the size of Alaska![0]

    [0] 594,468 vs 663,267

  • In my opinion...

    The bigger it is the slower the periodic cycle but the more dramatic the events it would deliver would be. Say on the order of 200,000 years.

    Even it it doesn't collide with another planted it could send thousands of asteroids on trajectories that could impact the earth in tens of thousands of years.

    • The bigger it is the slower the periodic cycle but the more dramatic the events it would deliver would be.

      No it isn't. The mass of the object does not affect its orbital period at all. A speck of dust has the same orbital velocity and period as a giant jupiter.

      Though it is slightly more complicated than that as the object also influences the object it orbits around.

      • The bigger it is the slower the periodic cycle but the more dramatic the events it would deliver would be.

        No it isn't. The mass of the object does not affect its orbital period at all. A speck of dust has the same orbital velocity and period as a giant jupiter.

        I suspect he meant that the bigger it is, the farther away it has to be to have not been detected. Which implies a longer orbit for a larger object....

    • it could send thousands of asteroids on trajectories that could impact the earth in tens of thousands of years.

      Presumably it would already have done that.

  • that they're not just looking at Pluto?
  • There is a whole section titled ''Where Do Baby Planets Come From?'', the sort of thing that would be banned on facebook. It then gets worse, the video presenter (Dr Ian O'neill) starts by saying ''from the ashes of your dead parents'', he has obviously been reading too many novels by Stephen King.

    :-)

  • Now, there's a shocker!

    Since the summary stated a period for the orbit, we can assume it isn't hyperbolic. A truly circular or parabolic orbit would be news, since exact numbers like that are hard to come by. And if it were a radial (i.e. intersecting) orbit, well, that would be big news.

    Maybe they were looking for "highly eccentric"?

  • by whitroth ( 9367 ) <whitroth@@@5-cent...us> on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:25AM (#52497327) Homepage

    Ceres is almost twice that size, *almost* the size of our Moon.

    Meanwhile, for many decades, the books for kids and teens always said that the Earth and Moon could be considered a double-planet system.

    Pluto is almost half again the size of our Moon.

    "Equal rights for Pluto! Pluto is a planet!" - young Plutonian alien in Worldcon masquerade, 2008

    • Meanwhile, for many decades, the books for kids and teens always said that the Earth and Moon could be considered a double-planet system.

      Also, for many decades books for adults about kids waned that masturbation can make you go blind. Did that make it true?

  • Since they found another planet orbiting our sun but is farther out how does that affect the news of Voyager 1 leaving our solar system a while back? Does that mean it still hasn't left the solar system yet or is it farther than this planet? They thought it was in interstellar space.
    • Every story in the technical press has covered the point that whether or not Voyager 1 has "left the Solar system" depends very critically on what your definition of "the edge of the Solar system" is.

      One fairly popular suggestion is to use the heliopause - the area swept of interstellar gas by the exudations of the Sun - as a boundary. In which case, the magnetometers and plasma instruments on Voyager 1 do appear to be detecting the "edge". By that definition.

      Of course, there is no reason I'm aware of to

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