Astronomy - USA (2020-01)

Ve

nus

Me
rcu
ry
Ma
rs

Ear

th

Jup

iter

Sat

urn

Ura

nus

Ne

ptu

ne

Plu

to

“Th

e (^) G
obl
in”
(^201)
(^5) T
G 3
(^87)
“Bi
de
n”
(^201)
(^2) V
P (^11)
3
Sed
na
“Fa
rOu
t”
(^201)
(^8) V
G (^18)
80 AU 123 AU
Not to scale
distant and faint trans-
Neptunian objects (TNOs),
which are frozen, rocky bodies
located past Neptune in a
region called the Kuiper Belt.
“We have
covered
about 25 per-
cent of the sky
to date in our sur-
vey,” Sheppard says.
And although FarOut,
which is thought to be about
310 miles (500 kilometers)
wide, is almost at the observa-
tional limit of their telescopes,
the larger the object, the easier
it is to spot. So, Sheppard says,
they should be able to detect
a few slightly bigger objects
located even farther away.
Through their survey,
Sheppard and his team are
working to bolster the number
of known distant objects like
FarOut. This, they hope, will
give them a better sense of
what’s aligning the orbits of
many of these far-f lung bodies,
possibly helping them finally
track down Planet Nine.
Researchers discovered FarOut, a faint point of light
that appeared in different locations on two images
taken an hour apart, with the powerful Subaru
Telescope on November 10, 2018. SCOTT SHEPPARD/
DAVID THOLEN
“FarOut,” located some
123 AU from the Sun, is only
about one-fifth the diameter
of Pluto, but it is some three
times more distant.
ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY AFTER ROBERTO
MOLAR CANDANOSA/SCOTT S. SHEPPARD/
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
The hypothetical world called
Planet Nine is expected to be
a super-Earth or sub-Neptune
planet with an orbit that
potentially takes it dozens of
times farther from the Sun
than the dwarf planet Pluto.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/R. HURT (IPAC)
FINDING FAR-OUT OBJECTS