Astronomers have found a planetary body lurking at the edge of our Solar System

Astronomers have found a planetary body lurking at the edge of our Solar System, and they’ve named it DeeDee.

DeeDee, which stands for Distant Dwarf, was first discovered late 2016, but little was known about its physical structure. Now, new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed details about the mysterious object’s true identity – and it’s even bigger than scientists expected.

more…

Interesting, ta.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers have found a planetary body lurking at the edge of our Solar System

Astronomers have found a planetary body lurking at the edge of our Solar System, and they’ve named it DeeDee.

DeeDee, which stands for Distant Dwarf, was first discovered late 2016, but little was known about its physical structure. Now, new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed details about the mysterious object’s true identity – and it’s even bigger than scientists expected.

more…

Well, not discovered in 2016, discovered in 2014, as shown in its name “2014 UZ224”.

“discovered at 92 au. This object is currently the second-most distant known trans-Neptunian object with reported orbital elements, surpassed in distance only by the dwarf planet Eris.”

Not yet mentioned in the official table ot Trans-Neptunian-Objects – oh wait – that’s because the article in Astrophysical Journal Letters is wrong! it’s not a TNO, it’s a SDO, a scattered disk object. Yes, here it is, in http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/t_centaurs.html

So, three significant errors in publication – date of discovery, description, and calling it a planetary body.

Name 2014 UZ224
q = 37.927 = perihelion in AU
Q = 179 = aphelion in AU
H = 3.5 = absolute magnitude

Makes it equal fifth largest SDO. The other larger ones are, in inverse size order:

Eris
Sedna
2007 OR10
2013 FY27
and equal fifth with 2007 UK126

This link is interesting:

http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-officially-found-a-candidate-for-planet-9

In 2016, Brown and his colleague Konstantin Batygin discovered that the orbits of a few different objects in the Kuiper Belt were being influenced by a massive body.

This was indirect evidence that a large, Neptune-sized planet exists in our solar system far beyond Pluto. However, looking for the mystery planet poses significant challenges.

> This link is interesting http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-officially-found-a-candidate-for-planet-9

I would be prepared to bet real money that none of those supposed four “candidates” are “planet 9”.

Astronomical surveys by ten years ago were already sufficiently complete to have ruled out anything bigger than Eris and Pluto at any distance short of the Oort cloud. This conclusion was also confirmed by the Wise satellite in 2011.

Brown is totally mad to suggest otherwise.

mollwollfumble said:

> This link is interesting http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-officially-found-a-candidate-for-planet-9

I would be prepared to bet real money that none of those supposed four “candidates” are “planet 9”.

Astronomical surveys by ten years ago were already sufficiently complete to have ruled out anything bigger than Eris and Pluto at any distance short of the Oort cloud. This conclusion was also confirmed by the Wise satellite in 2011.

Brown is totally mad to suggest otherwise.

Interesting. I suppose it is easy to get excited about such a possible find and perhaps lose some scientific objectivity.

Quite apart from being ruled out by observation, there hasn’t been nearly enough time since the start of the solar system for a planet-sized solar system body to have formed that far out.

mollwollfumble said:

Quite apart from being ruled out by observation, there hasn’t been nearly enough time since the start of the solar system for a planet-sized solar system body to have formed that far out.

In the Oort cloud, however, is another matter. I eagerly await discovery of a large Oort cloud object, or any large object closer than Proxima. Anything there as big as Jupiter is already ruled out, but larger than Pluto is not yet ruled out. The formation mechanism would be completely different.