Pink round dwarf planet discovered in our Solar system
A team of scientists spotted an object that is the most-distant body observed to date in our solar system. It is the first object ever discovered that is orbiting at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun. Announced yesterday, the new object, designated 2018 VG18 by the International Astronomical Union and nicknamed “Farout” by the researchers for its location, appears to be a pink round dwarf planet.
“All that we currently know about 2018 VG18 is its extreme distance from the sun, its approximate diameter, and its color,” said David Tholen, a researcher at the University of Hawaii. “Because 2018 VG18 is so distant, it orbits very slowly, likely taking more than 1,000 years to take one trip around the Sun.” The planet was first spotted with the Subaru 8-meter telescope in Hawaii in November, and the findings were confirmed in December by the Magellan telescope in Chile.
The distance between the sun and the Earth is 1 AU (astronomical unit), and the distance to Farout is about 120 AU. Pluto, for example, is only at about 34 AU, which means that Farout is more than 3.5 times further away. The findings now place the dwarf planet Eris, which was thought to be the most far-away object at 96 AU, in second place in terms of farthest distance from the sun.
What we do know about Farout so far is that it’s likely a spherical dwarf planet of about 500 km in diameter, and it probably has an ice-rich body, due to its pinkish color.
Although Farout is current the most distant solar system object, that doesn’t mean that other objects can’t travel even further away. Astronomers have observed the dwarf planet Sedna travel to a distance of 900 AU on its highly elliptical orbit. There are also probably trillions of comets in the Oort Cloud, located between 5,000 AU and 100,000 AU from the sun.
The research team is searching for distant objects to look for the gravitational pull of a super-Earth-size Planet Nine, also called planet X. Astronomers theorize the existence of this planet on the fringes of the solar system. And while some objects have suggested that it exists, locating it would be extremely difficult.
“2018 VG18 is much more distant and slower moving than any other observed solar system object, so it will take a few years to fully determine its orbit,” Scott Sheppard, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. “But it was found in a similar location on the sky to the other known extreme solar system objects, suggesting it might have the same type of orbit that most of them do. The orbital similarities shown by many of the known small, distant solar system bodies was the catalyst for our original assertion that there is a distant, massive planet at several hundred AU shepherding these smaller objects.”
According to the researchers, Planet Nine can alter the orbits of objects that are too distant to be influenced strongly by the inner solar-system planets. The hope is that objects such as Farout can help them determine the location of Planet Nine and one day even see it. In October, the same research team located 2015 TG387, nicknamed “The Goblin,” at about 80 AU. Notably, the Goblin has an orbit that is consistent with being influenced by the unseen Planet Nine on the solar system’s distant fringes.
“This discovery is truly an international achievement in research using telescopes located in Hawaii and Chile, operated by Japan, as well as a consortium of research institutions and universities in the United States,” said Chad Trujillo, a researcher at Northern Arizona University. “With new wide-field digital cameras on some of the world’s largest telescopes, we are finally exploring our Solar System’s fringes, far beyond Pluto.”
Picture credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Carnegie Institution for Science (Artist concept of 2018 VG18 “Farout”)
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