More News on the 9th Planet

[admin]

"New evidence found for Planet 9": https://phys.org/news/2024-04-evidence- ... y-nwletter

Admin.

[James Strom]

Even though they haven't found it yet they seem more certain than ever it's there. They've even narrowed down its orbit and mass. They now think it's only about 460 AU away. That gives it an orbital period of about 10,000 years, less than that of Sedna!

But it's much bigger, about six times the mass of Earth.

What's interesting is the speculation on which sign it'll be found in. Aries? Taurus?

[James Strom]

The telescope being used to search for Planet Nine has discovered a ring of planets around the solar system beyond the Kuiper Belt.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/hidden-ring-solar-system

From Wikipedia:

Subaru is the primary tool in the search for Planet Nine. Its large field of view, 75 times that of the Keck telescopes, and strong light-gathering power are suited for deep wide-field sky surveys. The search, split between a research group led by Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown and another led by Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo, is expected to take up to five years.

They were doing the same kind of search that was conducted to find Ultima Thule, the farthest planet ever visited by a spacecraft.

Ten new planets were discovered in a ring of about 70 to 90 AU from the sun. For perspective, Eris is about 68 AU away, on average.

What makes this very exciting is that the ring's mass is inferred to be as much as all the plutoids in the Kuiper Belt. The Solar System is much larger than we thought!


Here's the info on the new planets for data nerds (like myself).

r2)
R (au)
q (au)
a (au)
i (∘)
e
(days)

2022 LU16
28 2
26.12±0.52
71.48±3.65
19.78±18.61
84.48±54.48
28.29±19.05
0.82±0.16

2022 LT16
28 3
25.79±1.29
72.81±2.64
29.30±17.25
105.16±76.29
7.04±2.01
0.68±0.24

2022 LR15
28 2
26.32±0.35
74.28±3.90
21.73±18.89
86.64±52.83
41.00±24.45
0.80±0.15

2020 KX11
77 5
26.09±0.56
74.81±0.29
4.11±0.35
110.07±42.70
55.52±4.45
0.96±0.01

2022 LY15
27 2
25.64±1.00
76.37±3.80
23.13±19.94
116.38±108.28
31.94±19.89
0.80±0.17

2022 LQ16
29 4
26.43±0.48
76.81±2.04
44.22±16.60
147.52±123.79
7.89±1.47
0.60±0.25

2020 PD95
3 2
25.39±1.72
80.08±4.74
22.11±20.41
98.18±66.82
35.50±24.97
0.83±0.14

2022 LX15
28 3
25.97±0.52
82.15±1.56
9.13±2.09
83.13±53.49
58.07±16.12
0.86±0.08

2022 LS16
29 2
25.59±0.94
87.65±4.20
27.74±21.95
122.65±97.52
44.19±23.82
0.79±0.16

2020 MJ53
4 2
26.25±0.44
87.72±4.06
23.91±24.35
114.66±89.28
14.91±9.30
0.84±0.15

2020 MK53
4 2
25.99±0.49
162.03±5.35
46.54±45.03
212.81±161.42
31.44±20.77
0.83±0.15

[Noel Eastwood]

Thanks James.

[James Strom]

We now know of three asteroid belts:

The Ceroids (named after Ceres).
The Plutoids (named after Pluto).
The Eroids (named after Eris).