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Ok. I got really excited by the title. But the diameter of the planet is about 130 km, so its tiny. Maybe "fat asteroid" is a better term than "dwarf planet" ?
I don't think we should be shaming asteroids in this way - how about "gravitationally challenged"?
In that vein, "differently sized" should also be ok.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a dwarf planet of ~ 200 km diameter. The thing has a miniscule gravity well, it won't matter much compared to launching from earth and matching orbits with it, i think...
For comparison, that's about 10% of the Moon's diameter, i.e. 0.1% of its volume. (The mass ratios are probably within that 0.1% ballpark, but can't tell for sure until we know more about its composition.)
For reference 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is about 150 million km. Saturn ranges from being about 7 to 11 AU away from Earth. Voyager 1 is 152 AU away. This object is excitingly close and will be fun to study.
The Hubble photos we have from Saturn are a 7-8 AU range, right?
Even more stupid question:
Pointing the Hubble there is worth the effort? how many pixels wide would be a 200km diameter object at 11 AU?
How fast can we build and launch something to rendezvous with this dwarf planet?
New Horizons took a nearly straight shot to Pluto (just stopping by Jupiter on the way for a gravity assist). That trip took 9 years to travel 40 AU (not at constant speed, of courses, since it's constantly being drawn toward the Sun). This dwarf planet makes its closest approach at 10 AU, so you could do a fly by in less than 3 years if you wanted to pay for it. However, the science return from a flyby would be limi…
>almost undoubtedly the largest Oort Cloud object ever discovered- almost in dwarf planet territory! Not a dwarf planet.
Thus, "almost". But big enough to be spherical. Or to eliminate multicellular life on Earth, if it hit us.
Okay so if this was a direct hit, what would happen!? Would it just be a non event for the sun or could we expect higher temperatures on Earth or worse?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvR1fRTW8g
(Though that video mostly talks about small objects like rockets. Maybe it's a different story for dwarf planets?)
That said... Keep in mind that this is about a dwarf planet orbiting the Sun. It's 11 AU out, so twice as far from the Sun as Jupiter is.
Okay so if this was a direct hit, what would happen!? Would it just be a non event for the sun or could we expect higher temperatures on Earth or worse?
But keep in mind, it says "within 11 AU of the Sun", which is still beyond Saturn; Saturn's 9.5 AU away from the Sun, and Uranus is about 19 AU away from the Sun. So it's still pretty far away.