Astronomers Discover 'New Planet'

[MolliG]

BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk)

Astronomers discover 'new planet'

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

Astronomers have detected what could be the Solar System's 10th planet.

It was first seen by astronomers using California's Mount Palomar Observatory, and has been given the name "Sedna" after the Inuit goddess of the ocean.

Observations show it measures about 1,180-2,360km (730-1,470 miles) across, making it similar in size to Pluto.

There is likely to be some debate about whether it qualifies as a true planet, but some scientists are already saying it re-defines our Solar System...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3511678.stm

:)

[Seoulstriker]

i hear it's more of a planetisimal.

what does tane angle have to say about this? :)

[Kriz]

Beam me up Scotty !

[Pandy]

Holy ****.

[Skaman]

It was first seen by astronomers using California's Mount Palomar Observatory


Lets call it Planet: Palomar

[Haiw]

Or just call it: 'Stupid piece of rock'.
;)

[Skaman]

Or just call it: 'Stupid piece of rock'.
;)

Maybe it has oil?

p-)

[Trigger]

Not as much as Canada p-)

[Operation Ivy]

Thats cool, i guess :D

[Kenshin]

planet Anatuki

[Ratamacue]

Pluto isn't a planet, it's a Kuiper Belt Object. p-)

[Trigger]

I thought he was a cartoon dog.

[Herrmannek]

Pluto isn't a planet, it's a Kuiper Belt Object.


I thought he was a cartoon dog.

Maybe he signed into party

[Trigger]

Let's name it something cool...

Uranus is already taken soooooo.

How about 'Ur******'

[Marmot1]

Sorry it must be some good or goodies from greek or roman mythology like Mars,Mercury,Earth???(sorry bad example) Venus,Saturn,Pluto,Uran,... are all from mythology(except earth?) so next one must be too... How bout Prometheus or..... Amor :P

[Salty Dog]

more like the planet's name should be "tanuki". yeah, we need a planet named after a japanese racoon dog folklore

[memphiz]

Not as much as Canada p-)
why you want to invade us ;)
*grabs hockey stick and pitch fork*

[Tane Angle]

As requested p-)

Everyone forgets Quaor and company. And what about the possible, dare I probable, Nemisis Object? Where's my astronomy buddy, Ballistic.?

But yes, Pluto, Quaor, Sedna, and their friends are in a fuzzy middle ground; Seoulstriker's got one of the fun words for them. I tend to lean towards them being merely the largest of the outer objects. Estimates are several billion objects in the Oort Cloud with diameters over 1000 km. Now Pluto is mostly rock, hence the Kuiper Belt categorization that is growing in popularity, while the ice/rock mixtures halfway in between Kuiper and Oort Objects. True Oort Objects are more exclusively ice, though quite perhaps not too much more.

Anyways, I've got to run for now, but I'll check back in a while. Have a good one all, and just some thoughts...

[Seoulstriker]

so, tane, basically the entire area is filled with objects similar to pluto and sedna? oh well. :)

[Tane Angle]

Nah, not quite. There's at least one trillion Oort Objects larger than one meter. But because it is so vast, they're remarkably spread out.

[Ballistic]

Hey Tane :)


Background to Sedna
Sedna was discovered as part of a continuing survey lead by Mike Brown (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/) and Chad Trujillo (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad), of Caltech and Gemini Observatory, respectively. The survey uses a wide-field telescope on Palomar Mountain to hunt for bright Kuiper Belt (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~jewitt/kb.html) Objects (KBOs). The orbit has semimajor axis/eccentricity/inclination = a/e/i = 532AU/0.857/11.9.


Why is Sedna Interesting?

1 Its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) is at 76 AU. This means that it is effectively beyond the scattering influence of Neptune. This is unlike the Classical KBOs, and unlike the Scattered KBOs. It is similar, dynamically, to 2000 CR105 (for which a/e/i = 227AU/0.805/22.7) which has perihelion at 44 AU, also outside Neptune's reach, and which has been discussed in papers by Gladman et al (Icarus 157, 269, 2002) and Emel'Yanenko et al (Monthly Notices RAS, 338, 443, 2003). Other objects have larger aphelia than Sedna's 990 AU (e.g. Kuiper Belt Object 2000 OO67, with aphelion at 1010 AU) and many comets travel to larger distances. Sedna is interesting because of its perihelion distance.

2 Sedna is large (1000 - 1500 km). An object this large cannot have formed by accretion in the tenuous regions of the protoplanetary disk corresponding to its current location. Sedna must have formed elsewhere, presumably amongst the planets or in the Kuiper Belt, and been ejected outwards. Lastly, its perihelion was lifted out of the range of Neptune.

The orbit and the size attest to an early epoch in which strong gravitational scattering events rearranged the small bodies of the solar system.

Is Sedna an Oort Cloud Comet?

From the Classical Oort Cloud - no. The latter consists of objects whose orbits are so large (50,000 AU) that passing stars and galactic tides can alter their properties. Sedna doesn't travel very far out (1000 AU) and is effectively immune to external forces. Also, the inclinations of both Sedna and 2000 CR105 are small (12 and 23 degrees, respectively). These objects know where the plane of the solar system lies. Oort Cloud orbits are random with inclinations all the way up to 180 degrees.

So What Is It?

Sedna could be a member of a substantial population of bodies trapped between the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. These would have been emplaced at early times and unseen until recently. 2000 CR105 and Sedna are "just the tip of the iceberg", as they say. The scientific interest lies in how these objects had their perihelia lifted out of the planetary region.

Is Sedna = Planet X ?

No. Planet X (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~jewitt/kb/planetx.html) is a term invoked by Percival Lowell in the beginning of the 20th Century, when he thought that a planet massive enough to perturb Neptune might exist at large distances. Sedna, although big relative to most other KBOs, is too puny to measurably perturb Neptune (or anything else for that matter). Its mass is roughly one thousandth that of the Earth.

Why "Sedna" ?

Read the shocking tale of bestiality (with a dog and a ...bird), murder and filicide here (http://www.inuitgallery.com/sedna.shtml). Absolutely nothing to do with the Kuiper Belt, but that's OK.

Summary

Sedna = 2003 VB12 is an exciting new object whose large perihelion distance - beyond the reach of Neptune - is nearly unique amongst Kuiper Belt Objects. It has probably followed a dynamical path different from those of most KBOs and different from the Classical Oort Cloud comets. Its large size indicates that it was formed closer to the Sun and scattered outwards, probably at early times.

David Jewitt: Last updated Mar 2004

This is from Kuiper Belt (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html) a webpage obviously dedicated to the mysteries of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Interesting stuff. !!

[Tane Angle]

Hey bud, nice to have hear from you. Thanks for the post, I needed a picker-upper. This is the real rocket scientist here, guys.

So bud, what do you think of the possibility of a "Nemisis Object" orbiting the Sun out there? Think that an NO's orbital pattern could be the cause of the roughly regular mass extinctions? If not an NO, what do you think causes a comet to come hurtling as us from the Oort Cloud every 100 million years or so? Something messing with gravitiy, no?

Have a good one.

[FallenAngel]

Hey bud, nice to have hear from you. Thanks for the post, I needed a picker-upper. This is the real rocket scientist here, guys.

So bud, what do you think of the possibility of a "Nemisis Object" orbiting the Sun out there? Think that an NO's orbital pattern could be the cause of the roughly regular mass extinctions? If not an NO, what do you think causes a comet to come hurtling as us from the Oort Cloud every 100 million years or so? Something messing with gravitiy, no?

Have a good one.

It's those f*cking Arachnids...I'm telling ya. They made a movie about it :D

[Trigger]

So bud, what do you think of the possibility of a "Nemisis Object" orbiting the Sun out there? Think that an NO's orbital pattern could be the cause of the roughly regular mass extinctions? If not an NO, what do you think causes a comet to come hurtling as us from the Oort Cloud every 100 million years or so? Something messing with gravitiy, no?

I blame Sixgun. p-)

j/k

[Ballistic]

Hey bud, nice to have hear from you. Thanks for the post, I needed a picker-upper. This is the real rocket scientist here, guys.

So bud, what do you think of the possibility of a "Nemisis Object" orbiting the Sun out there? Think that an NO's orbital pattern could be the cause of the roughly regular mass extinctions? If not an NO, what do you think causes a comet to come hurtling as us from the Oort Cloud every 100 million years or so? Something messing with gravitiy, no?

Have a good one.

Well there's always the possibility of something like a "Nemesis object" or a "Planet X". There could very well be something out there that astronomers just havent seen yet even further out than the recently discovered Sedna. It's discovery has just increased the known size of our Solar system be an incredible amount. Sedna's orbit around the sun is so wide it has possibly been through the heliopause and into interstellar space and back again, how many times though, who knows ?

It would be interesting to find out what such an occurance does to an object, maybe we will find out when Voyager finally gets there. :)

Scientists "think" there is something else out there (Planet X/Nemesis object), if only for statistical purposes to explain the gravitational pull on certain objects and planets in our Solar system, if there is or not, only time and technology will tell.

This page HERE (http://www.viewzone.com/nemesis.html) is a good read about a possible Nemesis object.

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/ssc2004-05d_medium.jpg

Orbit of Sedna, pretty wild huh. :D

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/ssc2004-05c_medium.jpg

As far as comets and the like from the Oort Cloud, well I'm under the impression that comets like Halleys are Oort Cloud objects and are actually orbitting our sun but at such huge orbits we only ever see them once every (in Halley's comet instance) 76 years. Some other orbital periods last for 1000's of years.

Thats my 2 cents worth :)

[Ballistic]

It's those f*cking Arachnids...I'm telling ya. They made a movie about it :D

LOL :D I just watched that. :)


I blame Sixgun. p-)

j/k

Hehehe :lol:

[MolliG]

How do planets get their names?

By Duncan Walker
BBC News Online Magazine

Nasa-funded scientists have found what could be the tenth planet in our Solar System. They've called it Sedna. So how do planets get their names?
When astronomers at the California Institute of Technology plumped for Sedna, it was not a decision taken lightly.

They named it after the Inuit goddess of the sea who, according to some versions of her story, was thrown into Arctic waters by her father.

It seems appropriately chilly, as the team believes Sedna's surface temperature does not get above minus 240 degrees Celsius, because it can be up to 84 billion miles (130 billion km) from the Sun - 900 times further than the Earth.

There is, however, some debate about whether the scientists actually have the authority to decide a name...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3515658.stm

:)