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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:42 pm Post subject: Tenth planet found |
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See, it was only a matter of time. A planet bigger than Pluto has been discovered.
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NASA Scientists Discover Tenth Planet
A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system.
The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The discovery was announced today by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA.
The planet is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, Brown said. Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the Earth, the planet is the farthest-known object in the solar system, and the third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects.
"It will be visible with a telescope over the next six months and is currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus," said Brown, who made the discovery with colleagues Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., on January 8.
Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz first photographed the new planet with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003. However, the object was so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in January of this year. In the last seven months, the scientists have been studying the planet to better estimate its size and its motions.
"It's definitely bigger than Pluto," said Brown, who is a professor of planetary astronomy.
Scientists can infer the size of a solar system object by its brightness, just as one can infer the size of a faraway light bulb if one knows its wattage. The reflectance of the planet is not yet known. Scientists can not yet tell how much light from the sun is reflected away, but the amount of light the planet reflects puts a lower limit on its size.
"Even if it reflected 100 percent of the light reaching it, it would still be as big as Pluto," says Brown. "I'd say it's probably one and a half times the size of Pluto, but we're not sure yet of the final size.
"We are 100 percent confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in the outer solar system," Brown added.
The size of the planet is limited by observations using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has already proved its mettle in studying the heat of dim, faint, faraway objects such as the Kuiper-belt bodies. Because Spitzer is unable to detect the new planet, the overall diameter must be less than 2,000 miles, said Brown.
A name for the new planet has been proposed by the discoverers to the International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing the name.
For more information see:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown
For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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I think they should name the planet Canada, because it's far away, very cold, and has gone unnoticed for a long time.  |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 1:16 am Post subject: |
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| Derrek wrote: |
| I think they should name the planet Canada, because it's far away, very cold, and has gone unnoticed for a long time. |
You should give ol' Canuckistan a visit before you draw your conclusions.
You may find that it's not so cold, (in summer) and we don't all hate Americans. (a lot of us do hate what your government is doing though)
If you can bear the high gas prices and taxes that is. |
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keithinkorea
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:27 am Post subject: |
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| Derrek wrote: |
| I think they should name the planet Canada, because it's far away, very cold, and has gone unnoticed for a long time. |
That was pretty damn funny for you Derreck. Well done! |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:49 am Post subject: |
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Anyone wanna place wagers on what it'll be called? I'm betting 'Maia,' but I think 'Vulcan' would be infinitely cooler (no pun intended).
Sparkles*_* |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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yoda
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Location: Incheon, South Korea
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 8:07 am Post subject: |
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| but I think 'Vulcan' would be infinitely cooler (no pun intended). |
Na, Vulcan would be a bad choice because historically Vulcan was believed to exist inside the orbit of Mercuryfrom the late 19th century to the early 20th century. In fact, many 19th century observers claimed to have spotted it. Vulcan is much too hot for the 'cool' tenth planet. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:39 am Post subject: |
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I don't think people are as excited about this as they should be. I told quite a few people about this today. Maybe I'll post this bit about what the discovery actually means:
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Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute and leader of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, predicted in the early 1990s that there would be 1,000 Plutos out there. He has also contended, based on computer modeling, that there should be Mars-sized worlds hidden in the far corners of our solar system and even possibly other worlds as large as Earth.
In a telephone interview after Friday's announcement, Stern, who was not involved in the discovery, said he stands by those predictions and expects Mars-sized objects to be found within decades.
"I find this to be very satisfying," Stern said of 2003 UB313. "It's something we've been looking for for a long time."
Stern stopped short of calling it one of the greatest discoveries in astronomy, however, because he sees it as just one more of many findings of objects in this size range. Last year, for example, Brown's team found Sedna, which is about three-fourths as large as Pluto. Others include 2004 DW and Quaoar.
Stern sees the outer solar system as an attic full of undiscovered objects.
"Now we have the technology to see them," he said. "We're just barely scratching the surface." |
This new planet has an orbit that goes like this:
So you can see that it's actually not that far out; the reason why it wasn't discovered is because its orbit is completely out of whack with the plane all the major planets orbit on and nobody was really looking in that area.
In the next few years we might find an Earth-sized object out there, I like that. Earth looks small but it's really the fifth biggest planet, the largest of all the rocky planets. And what if we discover a planet out there with exactly the same gravity as ours? |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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| some waygug-in wrote: |
| Derrek wrote: |
| I think they should name the planet Canada, because it's far away, very cold, and has gone unnoticed for a long time. |
You should give ol' Canuckistan a visit before you draw your conclusions.
You may find that it's not so cold, (in summer) and we don't all hate Americans. (a lot of us do hate what your government is doing though)
If you can bear the high gas prices and taxes that is. |
A lot of your guys benefit from warm ocean currents near Vancouver, right? So the temps can be pretty nice, I'd imagine. |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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"Unnoticed it will be, as the entire world outside of mine is unnoticed,"
said almost everbody everywhere.
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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I think I have solved the name dilemma. It's UB 313 now. It would not be too difficult to rearrange the numbers and come up with UB-40. We could call it Rasta for short. |
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thekingofdisco
Joined: 29 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Fascinating stuff! |
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Grotto
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:56 am Post subject: |
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I think it could be called Janice, after my ex girlfriend cold, hostile and barren pretty much sums them both up!
10'th planet found~!  Hell I didnt even know it was lost |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 4:12 am Post subject: |
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CNN just reported that they are tentatively calling it "Xena" after the warrior princess.
The official name is pending...probably gotta be a Roman god... |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England
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| Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 4:12 am Post subject: |
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| I like Mith's threads about space. This news is very exciting. |
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