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Sedna May Have A Moon
ArrayIndexOutOfBound writes "The newly found planet Sedna may have a moon. It appears that most astronomers argue that Sedna is only another proof that neither Sedna nor Pluto are really planets.
Interestingly, the planet has been found by an 'automated sky survey telescope'..."
SYSS Mouse points to a NASA page with more information about "our potential 10th planet. ... It is 130 billion miles away from the sun (900 times Earth's distance from the sun) and has a 10,500 years orbit, compared to Pluto's 230 years around the sun."
Um, the article said it was 13 billion miles out, not 130 billion (now discovering something that size 130 billion miles out would be a real hell of an achievement :)
There's some theorizing that this may be part of the inner Oort shell; I think it more likely that at that distance it's an outer member of the Kuiper bodies.
Given the highly elliptical orbit, it's size, and it's apparently odd surface color, it's also possible that it's a body captured by the sun some hundreds of millions or billions of years ago. Now *that'd* be neat.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The first link is about an object named "2004 DW". The second link is about Sedna (previous known as 2003 VB12).
The newly found moon is orbiting Sedna, NOT 2004 DW.
The links in the slashdot article are misleading.
It's a space station.
According to this page on Sedna, it's got a perihelion (closest approach) of 76 AU, outside of the scattering influence of Neptune. 2000 OO67 has an aphelion like Sedna, but a much closer perihelion at 21 AU.
...therefore it is a planet.
Per Webster's:
moon, n. a natural satellite of a planet
So there.
Unknown host pong.
Boxen is not a word
A towel is not a hat
Pluto and Sedna are not planets
There are only 4 lights.
I thought it was a misprint in the article, so I went to Nature news. Sure enough at perihelion it is 13 billion km from the Sun an at aphelion it is 130 billion km. Wow, usually you only see orbits that eccentric with comets. Which makes it seem more like a captured object rather than one that formed in orbit. Wonder white kind of perturbing influence it has on comets in the Kuiper Belt, admittedly its small and in a very big volume ... still ...
Bitter and proud of it.
I understand that the "pluto - new horizons" mission, due hopefully for launch in 2006 (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission.htm) is looking for possible KB targets after getting to Pluto in 2015. I wonder if the planetary line-up would allow one of those targets to be Sedna? (prob not, but you could be lucky..)
Is there a chart anywhere that gives the location of all these various objects in relation to the solar system, at any given time?
There is another deep-space mission in the pipeline (ion-drive) to the heliopause and beyond - is Sedna positioned toward the heliopause?
By the way, Sedna is another good reason to upgrade and keep Hubble going..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Oh my GOD!! It's Planet X...quick, someone call Art Bell. The end of the world as at hand...Aarrrggghhhhhhhhaaaaaa!!!
Ya ya, I'm being silly.
Life is not for the lazy.
> I went to Nature news.
I've been writing for wikipedia about TNOs, and so I've checked links to articles at CNN, WashPost, BBC, etc.. The commercial news companies get so much wrong it's scary.
In the article you linked to at Nature.com it says "The Spitzer telescope has spied Sedna." and "The Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes later confirmed the find.". Co-discover Mike Brown however, clearly states that they "used the 30 meter diameter IRAM telscope, and in collaboration with John Stansberry at the University of Arizona and Bill Reach at the Spitzer Science Certer, we used the Spitzer Space Telescope. Sedna was too small to be detected in either."
Avoid the corporate media and go to the source, or lacking that know that the news companies exist to make money - not to report the facts.
I, for one, welcome our ... oh never mind.
It is always interesting to watch science being created. In this case, you see the nexus of a) actual facts (the discovery of a celestial object) with b) the completely artificial process of trying to name and classify things.
Is Sedna "really" a planet? Sedna is what it is, of the size and composition that it is, in the orbit that it is in. Sedna does not know or care whether it is "really" a planet or a minor planet or a dwarf planet or a comet.
Naming disputes are interesting because they always reflect the relative influence and authority of the people giving the names. Not being an astronomer, I can't identify who exactly is jockeying for positioning. Naming and classifying are part of the prescientific process. In a few decades we will probably have a better idea of how real these groupings of similar objects really are.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I was in the Pluto-is-a-planet camp for the most part. That's what I was taught in school. The thing is, I think we're going to find more and more that the difference between planet, comet and asteroid is more of a continuum than a stark separation. With that in mind, consider this: I heard this one astronomer on NPR last night say that he had expected to find hundreds of objects around the size of Pluto way out there. This might mean that if we classify Pluto as a planet, we might also have to say that 900 or 9000 other objects are planets too.
The word planet might just be a label that gets increasingly hard to apply as things get smaller just as it seems strange to call Pluto a comet. But just for the sake of not having to find 900 god and goddess names it might make sense to call the first 8 planets "major" and all the Ort cloud bodies "minor planets".
It's all just nomenclature anyway so it's all just a fight of how to right the textbooks.
Blaze a trail to the New World
What all of us are wondering:
Is there life on Sedna.
It says that the rock is made out of ice, and ice, as most of you know, is little more than very cold water which has turned into a solid.
Water is the source of all life.
Therefore, there's a very, very good possibility of life on Sedna.
In 2012, I will turn 35, when I will be legally able to run for President of the United States. At that point, I will make it my platform to make a manned mission to Sedna to search for intelligent life.
Since Sedna is so cold, I will recommend that astronaut ice cream *not* be eaten on this trip, and instead my astronauts will be given hot cocoa, tea, coffe, and Lipton's instant chicken noodle soup.
Since Sedna is so far out and is right at the edge of our solar system, I think it might be cool if we put a big billboard that says "Now leaving Solar System. Next star 4.2 light years away. Please do not litter!" And on the other side of the sign, it says, "Welcome to the Solar System! Bad Aliens, please go away." See, that will keep us safe from bad aliens, but encourage the good Aliens to come to engage in tourism, which is ultimately the way we will have to support ourselves in the future, with alien tourism (because all the other work will probably be outsourced to aliens because they will work for cheaper).
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Where does everyone keep getting this 10th stuff from... They keep forgetting Quauar and Varuna. Besides, everyone knows there are only 8 planets... :p
However, just because their arbitrary doesn't make them useless.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Something that large moving that fast sounds like a weapon of mass destruction to me.
Atmospheric (or lens) diffraction, I'd say. If you were out in space, you could probably block it out with the tip of a pin.
More info on this here.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
its not a planet. in 2003 they found Quaoar which was supooosed to be more planet like then Pluto, but its long forgotten (which probably means they were wrong). in six months or so this will be forgotten as well.. as for the speculation of a moon orbitting Sedna..because saying the orbitale period of Sedna is slow, it doesn't mean it has a moon. I'm sure that when the 'reddish looking comet' is closer to the Sun it will travel faster and will slow down when going along the aphelion.
Can you answer a question for me? Please?
The discovery of Sedna, Quaoar, and other TNOs, considered with the planet-planetoid debate, has lead me to wonder:
Why exactly are there so many large objects in the trans-Neptunian area?
I mean, it seems to me that part of the reason this planet debate is emerging is because we didn't observe just so many objects of this size in the past. We knew about the asteroid belt, trojan asteroids, and the like, but those aren't very big, relatively speaking. It's primarily because of the number of TNOs, together with their size, that seems to be igniting this debate.
So why are there so many relatively large objects in that region? Is it an population density thing?
I'm not an astronomer, astrophysist, physicist, or any other physical scientist, so I don't know that I could figure out a good answer to my question.
Pluto, Sedna, and Quaoar, another Kuiper belt object, should all be classified as planets, simply because, according to standingmethods of definition, they meet all the requirments. They are the correct size, and while it is not known if Sedna and Quaoar can support atmospheres, PLuto has an atmosphere for part of its revolution.