New solar object

[blobrana]

Amateur Astronomers have seemingly found a very large Trans Neptunian object while checking out some images from an old survey.
The icy object, designated 2003 EL61, is at least 1,500km across, though it may turn out to be larger than Pluto, which is 2,274km across.
It orbits just beyond the orbit of  Pluto, but not beyond the range of our sensors...

Web link:

[blobrana]

Hum,
I was in a rush,
Just got back from shopping,
and found that the news had already been picked up by the mass websites,
(I heard about it yesterday from a general email post from the discoverer on another forum),
and was too busy running around keeping my finger on the pulse...

So didn’t have time for a considered and balanced post…

[blobrana]

Hum,
How weird is this,
You wait around for ages and two come at the same time…

Dr. Michael Brown, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, presented his discovery and major findings of another distant object orbiting the Sun, at a press media teleconference.

With the current temporary name 2003UB313, the KBO was discovered by the Palomar Observatory's Samuel Oschin telescope.
They have proposed a name ([lila) to the IAU and will announce it when that name is accepted.

And it is huge - bigger than Pluto!!!

image link

[blobrana]

Cool,
Xena sounds good...
Perhaps the other one could be called Conan...

BTW, the word on the street is that lila is the name of Mike Brown's newborn daughter...

[blobrana]

Hum,
Indeed. And that was the reason that Dr. Clyde Tombaugh searched for, and found Pluto…
But it turned out that the planet was too small to account for the distortions…
So it was reasoned that there may exist perhaps 1000 more Pluto sized objects out there; with a few that may approach the size of Mars - as well as millions and millions of smaller planetesimals that orbit in the far reaches of the solar system…

[blobrana]

Hum,
Yeah, well many ppl have speculated that the solar system contains undiscovered massive planets or a distant stellar companion.
But, by using high-precision timing of pulsars (millisecond pulsars, pulsars in binary systems and pulsating white dwarfs), astronomers now know what the solar barycentre is doing with respect to the rest of the cosmos.
(The acceleration of the solar system barycentre can constrain the mass and position of the putative companion.)
No evidence for non-zero acceleration has been found;
it is not being pulled around by a massive Planet X , blackhole or darksun etc…

So there is nothing out there within worrying distance.

Er, until we pass closeby a few stars over the nest 45,000 years to 2 million years time...(there is a chance we may pick up an alien planet)