Post by Mech on Mar 15, 2004 14:49:07 GMT -5
Possible Tenth Planet Found
By Discovery News
One More to Come?
March 15, 2004 —NASA later on Monday will announce the discovery of what could be the tenth planet in our solar system.
The rocky world, orbiting the sun out beyond Pluto, is about three-quarters the size of Pluto, between 800 and 1,100 miles in diameter, according to news reports.
The scientists who found the object found another world, called Quaoar, in 2002. The new object, dubbed Sedna for the Inuit goddess who created the sea animals of the Arctic, is larger than Quaoar.
Sedna's very elliptical orbit takes 10,500 years to complete. Its discoverers — Michael Brown, associate professor of planetary astronomy, California Institute of Technology; Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii; and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University — report that there may be a tiny moon orbiting the planetoid.
The moon is redder than any other body in our solar system except Mars, the team says.
The object was found on Nov. 14 using a 48-inch telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory east of San Diego. Follow-up observations were made with the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, recently launched into orbit.
By Discovery News
One More to Come?
March 15, 2004 —NASA later on Monday will announce the discovery of what could be the tenth planet in our solar system.
The rocky world, orbiting the sun out beyond Pluto, is about three-quarters the size of Pluto, between 800 and 1,100 miles in diameter, according to news reports.
The scientists who found the object found another world, called Quaoar, in 2002. The new object, dubbed Sedna for the Inuit goddess who created the sea animals of the Arctic, is larger than Quaoar.
Sedna's very elliptical orbit takes 10,500 years to complete. Its discoverers — Michael Brown, associate professor of planetary astronomy, California Institute of Technology; Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii; and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University — report that there may be a tiny moon orbiting the planetoid.
The moon is redder than any other body in our solar system except Mars, the team says.
The object was found on Nov. 14 using a 48-inch telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory east of San Diego. Follow-up observations were made with the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, recently launched into orbit.