New most distant object in solar system
New most distant object in solar system
Dec 01, 2015
by Deborah Byrd in Blogs » Science Wire, Space
Earlier this month, astronomers announced a newly discovered object that is currently the most distant in our solar system. It’s more distant than Eris, Sedna, and 2012 VP113, all former record-holders. The object has been designated V774104, and it lies more than 100 times farther from the sun than Earth. It turned up in our sky – in the direction of the constellation Pisces the Fish – in images taken October 13, 2015 with Japan’s 8-meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Astronomers announced it at the yearly meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, held November 8-13, 2015 in Washington D.C.
Astronomers Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institution for Science), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory) and David Tholen (University of Hawaii) found V774104. They and other astronomers don’t know much about it, other than its present distance and its size. That distance is 103 astronomical units; 1 AU is one Earth-sun distance. That translates to 9.6 billion miles (15.4 billion km).
These astronomers used the object’s brightness to estimate its size. They think it may be about 300 miles (500 km) across, but it also might be up to about twice as large. For comparison, the object Ceres – largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – is about 600 miles (950 km) across.
What scientists don’t know – and what they want to find out – is the exact orbit of the object. The astronomers will be trying for a follow-up observation soon, but it might take some time – certainly months, maybe a year – before they can pin down its orbit with certainty.
In the meantime, the object is adding to astronomers’ struggle to understand how these distant, fairly substantially sized objects like V774104 came to be located so far from the sun. It’s also adding to the long-controversial, hypothetical case for a planet larger than Earth – a Planet X – at the outer boundaries of our solar system.
More
http://earthsky.org/space/new-most-distant-object-in-solar-system-v774104?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=e82c7e2e9e-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-e82c7e2e9e-393525109
= new reply since forum marked as read
