Re: Astronomers Claim Discovery of 10th Planet
The Official 10th Planet !! (scientific name 2003 UB313):
The planet, with the current temporary (and unfortunate) name 2003UB313, was discovered in an ongoing survey at Palomar Observatory’s Samuel Oschin telescope by astronomers Mike Brown (Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory), and David Rabinowitz (Yale University). We have proposed a name to the IAU and will announce it when that name is accepted. For those speculating that the name proposed is “Lila” based on the web site name I must warn you that that is really just a sentimental dad’s early-morning-after-no-sleep naming of a web site for his three week old daughter and one should not take it too seriously!
Information here will be continually updated as we learn more about this new tenth planet.
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/lilasmall.jpeg
Artists concept of the view from the planet, looking back towards the distant sun. Credit: Robert Hurt (IPAC)
What is it?
This new planet (see “What makes a planet?” below) is the largest object found in orbit around the sun since the discovery of Neptune and its moon Triton in 1846. It is larger than Pluto, discovered in 1930. Like Pluto, the new planet is a member of the Kuiper belt, a swarm of icy bodies beyond Neptune in orbit around the sun. Until this discovery Pluto was frequently described as “the largest Kuiper belt object” in addition to being called a planet. Pluto is now the second largest Kuiper belt object, while this is the largest currently known.
Where is it?
The new planet is the most distant object ever seen in orbit around the sun, even more distant than Sedna, the planetoid discovered almost 2 years ago. It is almost 10 billion miles from the sun and more than 3 times more distant than the next closest planet, Pluto and takes more than twice as long to orbit the sun as Pluto.
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/lonly.JPG
A view of the solar system from the north down. The four circles show the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The yellow dot in the center is the sun.
The earth, if it were shown, would be inside the yellow dot representing the sun. The orbits of the two outermost planets, along with their current positions, are also shown.