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Planet X Larger Than Pluto?
nova_planitia writes "The Minor Planet mailing list is buzzing with the discovery by an amateur astronomer of a 17th magnitude object 51 astronomical units from the Sun, tentatively designated 2003 EL61. For those not versed in astronomical lingo, this is an object several times brighter than Pluto even though it is 25% farther out from the Sun (the orbit vizualised by JPL). This means that barring a strangely reflective surface, this object is larger than Pluto, possibly Mars-sized! The debate whether Pluto is a planet is likely to get rekindled by this discovery."
The link to the BBC story in the summary is broken.
A functioning link can be found here.
So....the race is on to give this mysterious new planet a proper name! (Planet X is soooo Gen X...)
Please post your ideas below.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
This rock I have in my backyard is a mountain.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
From my inexplicably rejected story submitted hours ago:
The New Scientist reports:
On Thursday a new planet-sized object was found orbiting the Sun at a distance of between 35-51 AU (at different points in its orbit) and an inclination of 28 degrees to the plane of the inner planets. By comparison Pluto orbits at an average distance of 39 AU and an inclination if 17 degrees. (1 Astronomical Unit = the distance between the earth and the sun) If the object has a reflectivity similar to that of other Kuiper-belt bodies, it is approximately twice the size of Pluto. Jose-Luis Ortiz and his colleagues at Spain's Sierra Nevada Observatory discovered the object while reviewing data from 2003. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts verified the obsevations and designated the object 2003 EL61.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
My understanding, and correct me if I am wrong please, is that Pluto was not formed at the same time as the rest of our solar system, that it was pulled in. Would it be the same for this additional planet? If so, there could be others out there with orbits that we didn't expect.
Maybe I will move my telescope from being pointed at the neighbors shower and point it towards the sky.
What I love about space, is that the more we discover, the more we have to learn.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
In order to avoid confusion as to whether Pluto is a planet, call the new planet Pluto and rename old Pluto something else, like Herbert The Cow. Or Mr Gazpacho. Or Hellish Creamcheese.
It's Friday afternoon, and 5pm looks a LOOOONG way away. Can you tell?
"Pluto doesn't really exist, and we haven't landed on the moon."
Thats what they want you to think. We really have a super secret base on the moon. And Pluto is really our version of the Deathstar perched on the edge of the solar system in case any of the aliens on Mars get too far out of control.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
I, for one, welcome our new 2003-EL61ian overlords.
Sorry...I've never gotten to do one of those before.
Yes, because we defined it as such. Right or wrong, we've defined it as a planet, therefore it is a planet. Stop debating and arguing over the status of the hunk of rock. It's not like if we define it as something else it will change or cease to physically exist. We are simply categorizing it. We could call it a comet, it fits into that category too.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
OK, since most of the planets were named after Roman gods, here's a name for it:
Bacchus - the party planet! Party all night - and it's ALWAYS night!
www.eFax.com are spammers
it is.
Best Slashdot Co
A reflective surface you say?
That's no moon, It's a discoball!
*cue imperial march*
Costello: "We could call it planet Y."
Abbot: "Y?"
Costello: "Because"
Abbot: "Because why?"
Costello: "I don't know"
Abbot: "Third Base!"
Actually, TFA mentions that astronomers discovered Sedna in 2004, and since this is 2005, this is a separate discovery.
from TFA: "The same team that found Sedna have designated it [the new discovery] K40506A after it was picked up by the Gemini telescope and one of the twin Keck telescopes in Hawaii."
The TFA mentions two teams of scientists who found the object independently of each other. It doesn't say anything about discovery by an amateur astronomer.
How about Vista? That has such a nice ring to it :-)
That is incorrect. Sedna was discovered last year. This a new discovery which has not yet been named.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I'm somewhat ignorant when it comes to astronomy like this, so if the following questions are ridiculous, just ignore me :)
If the object is as big as the story says (With orbit that JPL predicted for it) why haven't we noticed it before? Given its (apparent) proximity to Pluto's orbit, wouldn't we have detected some sort of gravitational interaction?
Excellent! A new source of Illudium Phosdex, no doubt. It will probably be over three hundred years before we can get there, though, by which time our supplies will be alarmingly low.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Pluto: Old and busted.
Planet X: The new hotness!
a complete irrelevance. Pluto doesn't care, I don't care, only the categorisers actually care.
There's so much variance in objects in the solar system it's difficult to even come up with a definition of what a planet is although a popular definition is "large enough for it to form a sphere". This means that many satellites also become planets.
The best way to describe these objects is size, density, distance(s) from sun, orbital period, rotation period/direction etc... "planet" is a single word that expresses very little. Most common single words turn out to be quite abstract in their definitions!
Having said that - this is a very, very interesting little planet. Isn't it about time that we built a sizeable, nuclear powered, ion drive probe filled with instruments and hires telescopes and sent it hurtling off through the solar system with enough juice for say 50 years complete with a big transmitter to get the data back?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Ok, I'll say it, you can say it with me. Ready, Pluto is not a planet. It is a Kuiper belt object. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt Yes it's got a moon, yes it's pretty big for a KBO but it's not a proper planet. If Pluto is a planet then so is Ceres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Ceres and Juno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(3)_Juno They're even round too.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
It came in about seven o'clock last night...
Hello MPML,
Jose Luis Ortiz of Sierra Nevada Observatory asked me to forward his message. Actually he sent it to MPML today but it looks as if he is moderated and so his message is delayed. As this is pretty urgent, to give anyone interested the chance to do science on it, I hope my message gets relayed faster!
----------
Hi there,
We found a very slowly moving object while carrying out a checking of some of our oldest images from the modest TNO survey that we started in 2002.
http://www.iaa.es/~ortiz/OSNTWeb/index.htm
The object was very bright in our images (m_V~17.6!!) so we were able to precover it, and also recover it.
According to our best orbit fit and using regular assumptions on phase angle correction, the H value es around 0.3. Unfortunately we do not know the geometric albedo but if below 0.25 (which is the case of all TNOs for which an albedo has been measured except Pluto), the object would be larger than Pluto. However, it may well happen that this object is abnormally bright (with a very high albedo), like Pluto. So, depending on the albedo, this object might be sort of a Pluto's brother or Pluto's father...
This object is beyond Pluto and almost reachable by most amateurs, which is the reason why we write here!. It is observable right after sunset for a while at a reasonable elevation. Maybe some decent science can still come out of your observations.
Enjoy it!.
Our findings have been sent to the MPC, but the object has not received a provisional designation yet. Some ephemeris are given here:
Ephems (geocentric) [Date, RA, Dec, r, delta, elongation, mag]:
20050728.00000 13 21 50.208 +20 7 53.62 51.605 51.239 68.32 17.47
20050729.00000 13 21 51.856 +20 7 14.56 51.619 51.239 67.49 17.47
20050730.00000 13 21 53.576 +20 6 35.29 51.632 51.239 66.66 17.47
20050731.00000 13 21 55.369 +20 5 55.81 51.646 51.238 65.84 17.47
20050801.00000 13 21 57.233 +20 5 16.13 51.659 51.238 65.01 17.47
20050802.00000 13 21 59.169 +20 4 36.26 51.672 51.238 64.19 17.47
20050803.00000 13 22 1.176 +20 3 56.23 51.685 51.238 63.37 17.47
20050804.00000 13 22 3.253 +20 3 16.02 51.698 51.238 62.55 17.47
20050805.00000 13 22 5.401 +20 2 35.67 51.711 51.238 61.73 17.47
20050806.00000 13 22 7.619 +20 1 55.17 51.723 51.238 60.92 17.47
20050807.00000 13 22 9.906 +20 1 14.54 51.736 51.238 60.11 17.47
20050808.00000 13 22 12.261 +20 0 33.79 51.748 51.238 59.29 17.47
20050809.00000 13 22 14.685 +19 59 52.93 51.760 51.238 58.49 17.47
20050810.00000 13 22 17.176 +19 59 11.97 51.772 51.237 57.68 17.47
20050811.00000 13 22 19.734 +19 58 30.93 51.784 51.237 56.88 17.47
The orbital elements are:
OSNT11 Epoch 2005 July 29.0 TT = JDT 2453580.5
M 197.97485 (2000.0) P Q
n 0.00345428 Peri. 239.53682 +0.91285785 -0.07597426
a 43.3408541 Node 121.89008 +0.13526717 +0.98332108
e 0.1887862 Incl. 28.19395 -0.38521856 +0.16524998
P 285.33 H 0.2 G 0.15 U 2
--
Jose-Luis Ortiz
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC
P.O.Box 3004. 18080 Granada. Spain.
----------
Regards,
Jaime Nomen
620 OAM
Cue the Uranus jokes:
"Speaking of size, what about Uranus?"
"How can be possible comment on this new planet when we still have yet to send a probe to Uranus?"
Some wise astronomers have tried to change the speech from "your anus" to "urine us" or "you're in us". Unfortunately the planet seems to just be plain doomed as far as American English pronounciation goes.
The published magnitude of Pluto is around 13-14. This thing is 25% further from the Sun (and Earth too) away but several times 'brighter' due to being more reflective and larger. That means it ought to appear brighter in the sky than Pluto. But it's reported as magnitude 17, which is quite a bit dimmer.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
When's the first astrologer going to sue because the discovery of this planet has deformed her horoscope?
Former US House candidate, TN-5
Since this was found so easily, one has to wonder just how many of them there are out there. This might be only the first of many.
This, by the way, is an excellent reason to call these things TNOs (Trans-Neptunian Objects). Who wants to memorize the 85 planets of our solar system?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Specifically these groups... http://www.zetatalk.com/ http://www.samsara2003.com/New/new-main.htm
Meh.
Discovered by an amateur, not seen before with all hightech equipment, strangely reflectant surface almost rendering it invisible?? Round (asuming it is a ballshaped object): It is a super borg sphere!! Run to the closet and get your bathlets! They can not fight against that!
Ok, the other possibility: Independence day...
And the last option: It is a cloacked deathstar!
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
But when I was in high school, Pluto didn't have a moon, and it's mass was about the same as Mercury. This planet might have been the one they were teaching me about. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Before Einstein explained the precession of Mercury's perihelion, many scientists believed there was a planet Vulcan inside Mercury's orbit. Some even "spotted" it. (For the "Some" link, search on "Vulcan".)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Note that this is not Sedna, and this is not Nibiru.
Someone suggested moving Uranus' name to this planet. I think there should be a contest! Possible new names:
Vaginus
Clitorum
Vulvus
I mean, why not. It's frigid and inaccessible to those who want to "study" it most!
It's just Big Boned!
Could this large object out there possibly be responsible for the Pioneer Anomaly?
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Pluto was once thought to be much more massive than it is currently known to be. When I was in high school, prevailing theories had it as being slightly larger than Mercury. Furthermore, it was first discovered due to its supposed perturbation on the planet Uranus (those perturbations were, in fact, due to incorrect calculations, IIRC). Additionally, we had very little information on other objects of similar ilk. So, why wouldn't it have been considered a planet?
The flip side of the question is, "should we change its status now?" I don't really care much, but I don't see why its so important whether its a planet or a KBO, from a labeling point of view.
Some might argue that it makes teaching about the Solar System easier, but I think the exceptions can help to make the system more interesting, and, hence, easier to learn about.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
no astronomy discussion would be complete without reference to the death star and the eerie resemblance of saturn's moon, Mimas?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Essentially, European astronomers have found something they call 2003 EL61 and what American astronomers call K40506A.
There are questions on how reflective the object is, which means we don't have that much information on how big it is or how far away it is. The guesses by astronomers, at this point, are pretty speculative, according to the BBC, which is tracking this breaking story.
NASA has published a wild guess as to the orbit, in Java.
The other known super-large (1000Km or bigger) Kuiper Belt objects are:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There could still be free-flowing water under the ice with life swimming around in it.
Highly unlikely...scientists believe that there may be liquid water under the ice of Europa (I assume that's the parallel you're attempting to draw here) because of the heating caused by the tidal action of Jupiter's gravity (don't take my word for it...here's an informative link).
As far out from the Sun as this planet is, it is certain that it recieves an insufficient supply of either radiation or tidal friction to warm water ice to the melting point.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Amongst professional astronomers (which includes me), Pluto is generally not considered a planet. It is the largest member of the Kuiper Belt. It is historical accident that Pluto was discovered almost 50 years before the second Kuiper Belt object, Charon, in 1978. The third KBO was found in 1993. Since then, over 700 other KBOs have been found, several of which rival Pluto in size.
What we have here is one that could be larger than Pluto. This is not unexpected, but has been predicted ever since we started discovering KBOs in serious numbers. There is always a distribution of sizes, and Pluto lies near the upper end, but it is unlikely that it is the largest, and even less likely that it would be distinctly larger than the rest of the population.
To call Pluto a planet is to create a category of "ice planets" which contains only one object. That is scientifically silly. To call it a Kuiper Belt Object fits it in with a family of other objects whose characteristics in composition, orbit size, orbit shape, orbit inclination, companions, etc are shared amongst the group. That is a scientific classification.
The solar system does not contain "the Sun and
9 planets" as so many of us incorrectly learned. Rather, it contains 6 families: a star, the rocky planets, the asteroid belt, the gas giant planets, the Kuiper belt, and the Oort cloud. Each of these families shares common characteristics that are the basis for this classification. Pluto, and this new discovery,
fit squarely in the Kuiper belt.
Now for the truth about planets. The IAU, which
governs these things, has no official definition of what constitutes a planet. There is a reasonable upper limit in mass (i.e., not so larger as to create fusion at it core), but there is no lower limit. Most astronomers would say that a reasonable idea would be large enough for gravity to make it spherical (or close to, like Earth). However, then other KBOs and asteroids qualify as planets. You simply can't come up with a rigorous definition that includes Pluto and excludes the others unless you work customize your definition in a manner that is not scientific.
This will not be the last big KBO. There will be several more. These are exciting times as we discover more and more about our own backyard.
An enormous rock with a name from the Underwold? The obvious choice is Sisyphus.
Space.com has a clarifying article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050729_large _object.html. 1. It apparently isn't larger than Pluto, regardless of how reflective its surface might be. It's mass is only about a third of Pluto. 2. It has a very small moon. 3. It was *just* too dim to have been found by Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto.
Rb
I made a heck of a typo when I submitted this story, 2005 EL61 is a about roughly eight times fainter than Pluto, not brighter. The latest information is that this object is more likely to be in the ballpark of Pluto's size and not bigger. This object also does not appear to be the same 17th magnitude outer solar system object observed by the Gemini telescope earlier this year that was going to be "announced" in September at the DPS meeting. So it looks like a few of these guys may be out there.
A man said to the universe "Sir, I exist!"
They loooove our television there, and our mail-order furniture.
If it is then it's time to start evacuating before the Grebulons destroy the Earth because is rising into capricorn.
ahh screw it... Let's just go to Stavro Mueller Beta and watch the show...
It's not just the orbit of the inner planets (which would be Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) on that plane. All planets except Pluto fit on there.
The Sun rotates. Furthermore, it rotates along the same plane as the planets' orbits. (Again, you can confirm this yourself if you have Celestia. Just go to the Sun, back up a bit, make sure the orbits are turned on and speed up time a bit.)
The theory I read in The Cartoon History of the Universe (great book) was that as the gases condensed to form the Sun they began to spin faster and faster. This scattered out debris that would orbit around the Sun along the same plane. It is that debris which condensed to form what I consider to be planets.
Second, what exactly is a "planet"?
Good question. I wonder if there is some exact set of rules that decides this. Even though it may not be the technical definition, I like the idea of the offspring of the Sun being the de facto planets in our Solar System.
Happy people make bad consumers.
In a word - No.
Both Pioneer Spacecraft (as well as Voyager) measure the anomaly, and they are moving away from the Sun in different directions. A distant object has been ruled out as a potential source of the effect, since to produce a slowing of all the spacecraft you need a force acting towards the sun. Whatever is causing them to slow down, it's not a solar system body too far out for us to see.
-- IANAL, BIPOOTV
Call it "oid"
That way, the name will be informative, and will help alleviate future pointless debate over whether it is a planet (It is, and it's called Oid) or a planetoid (that's what I said... planet-oid). -nAP
Planet Reagan
*shiver*
Nah, they'd stick to naming planets after gods...
Planet Jesus.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The Pioneer anomoly is a unaccounted for force in the direction of the Sun and results the slowing down of the probes. If this new object was some massive unkown body it would be if anything applying a force out from the Sun. Also the probes are in different quadrants and would expect to see different effect.
There does seem to be a point where Pluto's and EL61's orbits get rather close. I wonder if this could point to a potential common origin? Maybe Something Else (tm) passed by and flung 2003 El61 out of the little triad. (I would doubt Pluto and Charon would be the ones tossed because the odds of them staying together would be low) The distance between the orbits might be explained by precession.
Unfortunately the Java app only covers from Jan 1, 1600-2200 so I couldn't test this theory. Can someone else play with the app and look into the distant past for a near miss?
You nailed it with the 'night all the time' bit. But it's also: :)
(a) In a more eccentric orbit than any other planet.
(b) In a longer orbit than any other planet.
(c) In a more inclined orbit than any other planet.
So it's more eccentric, lazier, and tipsier than any other planet. Bacchus is therefore a perfect name for it.
Oh, and since it's so cold there should be plenty of ice for the alcholic beverages.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The planet's name is Nibiru. At least thats what the Ancient Sumerians called it.
They Sumerians knew about all planets we currently know about, including Pluto which we didn't discover for ourselves until 1930. However, they also knew about a 10th planet past Pluto that they called Nibiru. According to the Sumerians, this 10th planet had a highly eliptical orbit and orbited the sun in the opposite direction to the rest of the planets.
The Sumerian's even believed an alien race, known as the Annunaki, inhabited this planet and possessed space travel technology that allows them to visit earth while their planet is inside the asteroid belt because of its highly eliptical orbit.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
...then it HAS to be Mondas. But it's late! It should have reached perihelion in 1986.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, since we are into tech names in this thread:
How about naming the planet(-ino)
"foo" and its moon "bar" ?
because cleary it is Far Out and Beyond All Recovery
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Planet X was thought to be a very large planet, responsible for causing apparent perturbations we were seeing in the orbit of Uranus and Neptune. When Voyager II flew by these planets and got refined measurements of their masses, the discrepancies went away. We now know that the revised data shows no perturbations, putting severe limits on very large objects to very great distances. That is, there is no Planet X, and there never was.
There are likely all sorts of Pluto-sized objects out there, though. So finding another one is not surprising. There's nothing special about the mass of Pluto, and so some Kuiperoids will be around the same mass, and some will be more (though probably not too many). Thus, this discovery is nothing very surprising. You'd expect to find Kuiperoids more massive than Pluto out there.
As for reigniting the "controversy" about Pluto's planetary status, probably not. There's really not much controversy here. The IAU does not have and never has had an objective definition of the word planet that Pluto succeeds or fails in meeting the criteria for. A planet is literally what we point to and say, "That's a planet." The terms are made up by us, after all; do you think Pluto cares what it's called? Do you think that somehow further enhances the study of it, knowing that it's in this classification bin but not this one?
There have been a few serious astronomers suggesting conferring dual classification -- as both a planet and an asteroid/Kuiperoid -- to Pluto. The official proposal was never about demotion. Talk at length about removing planetary status from Pluto has largely been taking place in the popular press and by amateurs. Most actual astronomers don't care, because it doesn't matter what name you give something.
Just when you thought that this couldn't be bigger news, Ron Baalke at JPL has pointed out that another object, 2003 UB313, resides at 96 AU and has a diameter from 4400 km to 9900 km, assuming its albedo is between 0.05 and 0.25. Though the inclination is a bit weird (44 degrees), this may be considered planet-sized.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/mpec/K05/K05O41.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/2003ub313.html
However, there's an even more interesting thing that Mike Brown has on his page, called 2003 UB313 (a.k.a. "Lila").
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Both Pioneer Spacecraft (as well as Voyager) measure the anomaly, and they are moving away from the Sun in different directions.
IIRC, The Voyagers were unable to measure it because of the stabilization technology they use.
Table-ized A.I.