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Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

spectrum.ieee.org

11–20 of 63 posts

Re: Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

#11
post #8

What do you define as a planet though? If you consider our sun a frame of reference, you might find that technically some far away objects bigger than the sun have complex periodical movements around the sun.

I'm pretty sure the definition would include having the sun as the major gravitational force acting on the object.

Re: Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

#12
post #5
post #3

Noob question: Why isn't it passing in front of stars? Are we seeing a sequential dimming of occluded stars along the plane of the ecliptic?

My intuition suggests that a planet far out and small would be very difficult to detect by its occlusion. This page calculates that Pluto for instance spans only 3 pixels at the Hubble space telescopes resolution: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/0214101...

Indeed. The article says that the hypothetical planet would be 2 pixels.

Re: Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

#14
post #8

What do you define as a planet though? If you consider our sun a frame of reference, you might find that technically some far away objects bigger than the sun have complex periodical movements around the sun.

Well the definition that removed pluto from being a planet is this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet

Re: Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

#17

Can we name this one Pluto too, for old times' sake?

"And we shall call it Pluto Too!"

"Pluto Two!? That's ridiculous!"

"Wait, is it two like the number two or too like also??"

---

I don't know how our story resolves, but that exchange popped in to my head.

Re: Race to discover Planet Nine using astronomy and new computational techniques

#20
post #2

A nice update in the search for Planet Nine that touches on a lot of new computational, survey-based, and modeling efforts to localize the planet. Great level of detail.

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