Dwarf planet discovered at solar systems edge (CNN) -- For anyone holding out hope of Pluto being reinstated as a major planet, you should probably do as they say in the movie Frozen and let it go. But heres a new exciting find from the far reaches of our solar system: Astronomers have discovered a dwarf planet thats even farther away than Pluto -- so far, in fact, that its orbit reaches into a new edge of the solar system. The dwarf planets current name is 2012 VP113, and it is located in a wasteland or badland of the solar system, said astronomer Chad Trujillo, head of adaptive optics at Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and co-discoverer of this object. His study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The big question is, how is this formed? How can you get an object out there? he said. We really dont know an answer to that yet. This dwarf planet is unusual because of its orbit, Trujillo said. On its elliptical path, the closest it ever comes to the sun is still very far away from the rest of the solar system. Its full orbit is farther than the orbit of any other object we know of in the solar system. Nothing that we currently know in the solar system can make objects that are so distant all the time, that never come close to any of the planets, Trujillo said. The most distant major planet from the sun is Neptune, orbiting our star at a distance of 30 astronomical units. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the sun -- about 150 million kilometers, or 93 million miles. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt, a doughnut-shaped ring of small objects, which extends from about 30 to 55 AU, according to NASA. This belt may contain hundreds of thousands of large icy objects and trillions of comets, if not more. Pluto is considered a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. The awkwardly-named 2012 VP113 is much farther from the sun, at 83 astronomical units. That puts it at 83 times the distance between our own planet and the sun. Sources: cnn/2014/03/26/tech/innovation/dwarf-planet-solar-system/index.html universetoday/110719/discovery-possible-dwarf-planet-found-far-beyond-plutos-orbit/ astronomy/news/2014/03/major-new-dwarf-planet-discovered
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:14:17 +0000
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