Astronomers find new dwarf planet in the outer solar system

[Candlelight]

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/astronomers-discover-dwarf-planet-in-the-outer-solar-system-2014-3

Astronomers have detected a planet-like object that orbits the sun at an extreme distance, raising the possibility that more undiscovered objects are just beyond the former planet of Pluto.
Until now, the only known object in a far-off region of the solar system known as the inner Oort cloud was a dwarf planet discovered a decade ago, called Sedna.
In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature researchers describe the new object, called 2012 VP113.
It’s still a mystery how both 2012 VP113 or Sedna got to the inner Oort cloud, but researchers now think there could be hundreds of thousands of objects in what was previously believed to be a “no-man’s-land” — we just haven’t detected them yet.
2012 VP113 lies in a region between the Kupier belt and the spherical Oort cloud. It’s closest approach to the sun is 80 AU, more distant than Sedna’s closest approach of 76 AU. 2012 VP113 is a little more than one-third the size of Sedna, estimated to be about 400 km (248 miles) across, whereas Sedna is about 1,000 km (621 miles) across.

C'mon Mondas...

 

[Candlelight]

This one expands on it better:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/s...rted-in-far-reaches-of-solar-system.html?_r=0

For the latest search, Dr. Trujillo, who had been a member of Dr. Brown’s team that discovered Sedna, and Dr. Sheppard used a 13-foot-diameter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. In November 2012, they spotted a moving point of light — 2012 VP113. They could tell it was beyond the Kuiper Belt, but not whether its orbit looped inward into the Kuiper Belt or stretched outward like Sedna’s.
Follow-up observations last year confirmed that they had discovered a Sednoid.
Scientists have come up with various ideas to explain how Sedna got there. Dr. Brown, for one, thinks that the Sednoids were pushed there when the sun was part of a dense cluster of stars —"a fossil record of the birth of the solar system,” he said.
Others suggest that a rogue planet, ejected from the inner solar system, dragged out the Sednoids as it flew through the Kuiper Belt. Dr. Trujillo and Dr. Sheppard point out that Sedna and 2012 VP113 have similar values for one orbital parameter known as the argument of perhelion, as do several other bodies at the edge of the Kuiper Belt. That could be a sign of the gravitational influence of an unseen planet.

Be awesome if there was a big planet out there.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

C'mon Mondas...

Or even Nibiru?

 

[Candlelight]

http://news.discovery.com/space/ast...-discovered-sporting-a-ring-system-140326.htm

When you think of a celestial ring system, the beautiful ringed planet Saturn will likely jump to mind. But for the first time astronomers have discovered that ring systems aren’t exclusive to planetary bodies — asteroids can have them too.
Announced on Wednesday, astronomers using several observatories in South America, including the ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, have discovered that distant asteroid Chariklo possesses two distinct rings. Chariklo, which is approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) wide, is the largest space rock in a class of asteroids known as Centaurs that orbit between Saturn and Uranus in the outer solar system.

What else will we find today? They always come in threes...

RAMA!

 

[Christopher]

Be awesome if there was a big planet out there.

They've ruled out anything Jupiter- or Saturn-sized in the Inner Kuiper Belt, but something up to the size of a "super-Earth" is still a possibility. There could be multiple undiscovered planets out there.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=30286

 

[publiusr]

Nibiru folks will eat this up.