Will the real Planet X please stand up?
So around 11:15 a.m. on Friday,
I followed this link on Robot Wisdom:
Yet another new planetlike object beyond Neptune
"On Thursday, an email with the subject, 'Big TNO discovery, urgent' was sent to a popular astronomy mailing list. The message described the discovery of a 'very bright' object that was creeping along slowly beyond the orbit of Neptune -- making it a Trans-Neptunian Object or TNO...
"If [the object's] reflectivity is as dim as most other distant, rocky objects that have been studied, then this object 'would be larger than Pluto,' Jose-Luis Ortiz, an astronomer at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, wrote in the email. Pluto is about 2300 kilometres across...
"Initial calculations suggested [that this] Kuiper Belt object could be up to twice as big as Pluto, but new data indicates it is about 70% the diameter of that planet. This makes its size second only to Pluto itself among objects beyond Neptune.
"The new object has been temporarily named 2003 EL61 by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts... Newly disclosed observations of the giant world revealed on Friday [morning] show that it has a moon."
Now all of this certainly made for interesting reading.
However, it seemed fairly certain that this Kuiper Belt
object was smaller than Pluto, so the news didn't have
the full import of evidence of a new planet.
As noted in some articles, the discovery of 2003 EL61
simply posed the latest challenge to Pluto's status
as a planet (and added to the controversry
about what qualifies as a planet).
I skimmed for photos of this object, moved on to
the latest news about the space shuttle,
and then I went back to work.
After dinner I checked the news again, and I started
to tell my Lady Friend that some wire story about
"the discovery of a 10th planet" was taking
the 2003 EL61 story too far. I began to re-read
the article that I had seen that morning,
and that's when I realized that this next story
was about an entirely different object:
Object bigger than Pluto discovered, called 10th planet
or, with the best headline yet:
New planet or just a notch on the Kuiper Belt?
"Astronomers have discovered an object in our solar system that is larger than Pluto. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested.
"The new world's size is not at issue. But the very definition of planethood is...
"The announcement, made today by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, came just hours after another newfound object, one slightly smaller than Pluto, was revealed in a very confusing day for astronomers and the media.
These time-lapse images of a newfound planet in our solar system, called 2003UB313, were taken on Oct. 21, 2003, using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The planet, circled in white, is seen moving across a field of stars. The three images were taken about 90 minutes apart. Scientists did not discover that the object in these pictures was a planet until Jan. 8, 2005.
"The object is round and could be up to twice as large as Pluto, Brown told reporters in a hastily called NASA-run teleconference Friday evening. The briefing was arranged after Brown received word that a secure Web site containing the discovery was hacked and the hacker threatened to release the information.
"The new object, temporarily named 2003 UB313, is about three times as far from the Sun as is Pluto. It is currently nine billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away from the Sun as Earth. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges from 2.7 billion miles to 4.6 billion.
"'This is the first object to be confirmed to be larger than Pluto in the outer solar system.'"
"Brown's best estimate is that the object is 2,100 miles wide, about 1-1/2 times the diameter of Pluto. The object is inclined by a whopping 45 degrees to the main plane of the solar system, where most of the other planets orbit. That's why it eluded discovery: nobody was looking there until now, Brown said.
"Brown has submitted a name for the new planet to the International Astronomical Union, which has yet to act on the proposal, but he did not release the proposed name Friday.
"Brown labeled the object as a 10th planet, but there are scientists who dispute the classification of Pluto as such. There is no official definition for a planet and setting standards like size limits or orbital patterns potentially invites other objects to take the 'planet' label.
"Brown and colleagues Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University first photographed the object in 2003 using a 48-inch telescope at the Palomar Observatory. But it was so far away that its motion was not detected until data was analyzed again this past January. It will take at least six months before astronomers can determine its exact size."
"Some astronomers view 2003 UB313 as a Kuiper Belt object and not a planet. The Kuiper Belt is a region of frozen objects beyond Neptune. Pluto is called a Kuiper Belt object by many astronomers.
"Brown himself has argued in the past for Pluto's demotion from planet status, because of its diminutive size and eccentric and inclined orbit. But today he struck a different note.
"'Pluto has been a planet for so long that the world is comfortable with that,' Brown said in the teleconference. 'It seems to me a logical extension that anything bigger than Pluto and farther out is a planet.'
"Offering additional justification, Brown said 2003 UB313 appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. That's not the case with other large Kuiper Belt objects, however...
"Brian Marsden, who runs the Minor Planet Center where data on objects like this are collected, says that if Pluto is a planet, then other round objects nearly as large as Pluto ought to be called planets. On that logic, 2003 UB313 would perhaps be a planet, but it would have to get in line behind a handful of others that were discovered previously.
"'I would not call it the 10th planet,' Marsden told SPACE.com.
"Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, called the discovery 'a major step.' But Boss would not call 2003 UB313 a planet at all. Instead, he said Pluto and other small objects beyond Neptune should be called, at best, 'Kuiper Belt planets.'
"'To just call them planets does an injustice to the big guys in the solar system,' Boss said in a telephone interview.
"The 'new planet' will be visible during the next six months and it [can be observed] almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus."
"A map shows the position of 2003 UB313 in the eastern sky as of about 1:30 a.m. from mid-northern latitudes for the next several days [in summer 2005]. Seasoned amateur astronomers with large backyard telescopes should be able to find it."
I followed this link on Robot Wisdom:
Yet another new planetlike object beyond Neptune
"On Thursday, an email with the subject, 'Big TNO discovery, urgent' was sent to a popular astronomy mailing list. The message described the discovery of a 'very bright' object that was creeping along slowly beyond the orbit of Neptune -- making it a Trans-Neptunian Object or TNO...
"If [the object's] reflectivity is as dim as most other distant, rocky objects that have been studied, then this object 'would be larger than Pluto,' Jose-Luis Ortiz, an astronomer at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, wrote in the email. Pluto is about 2300 kilometres across...
"Initial calculations suggested [that this] Kuiper Belt object could be up to twice as big as Pluto, but new data indicates it is about 70% the diameter of that planet. This makes its size second only to Pluto itself among objects beyond Neptune.
"The new object has been temporarily named 2003 EL61 by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts... Newly disclosed observations of the giant world revealed on Friday [morning] show that it has a moon."
Now all of this certainly made for interesting reading.
However, it seemed fairly certain that this Kuiper Belt
object was smaller than Pluto, so the news didn't have
the full import of evidence of a new planet.
As noted in some articles, the discovery of 2003 EL61
simply posed the latest challenge to Pluto's status
as a planet (and added to the controversry
about what qualifies as a planet).
I skimmed for photos of this object, moved on to
the latest news about the space shuttle,
and then I went back to work.
After dinner I checked the news again, and I started
to tell my Lady Friend that some wire story about
"the discovery of a 10th planet" was taking
the 2003 EL61 story too far. I began to re-read
the article that I had seen that morning,
and that's when I realized that this next story
was about an entirely different object:
Object bigger than Pluto discovered, called 10th planet
or, with the best headline yet:
New planet or just a notch on the Kuiper Belt?
"Astronomers have discovered an object in our solar system that is larger than Pluto. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested.
"The new world's size is not at issue. But the very definition of planethood is...
"The announcement, made today by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, came just hours after another newfound object, one slightly smaller than Pluto, was revealed in a very confusing day for astronomers and the media.
These time-lapse images of a newfound planet in our solar system, called 2003UB313, were taken on Oct. 21, 2003, using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The planet, circled in white, is seen moving across a field of stars. The three images were taken about 90 minutes apart. Scientists did not discover that the object in these pictures was a planet until Jan. 8, 2005.
"The object is round and could be up to twice as large as Pluto, Brown told reporters in a hastily called NASA-run teleconference Friday evening. The briefing was arranged after Brown received word that a secure Web site containing the discovery was hacked and the hacker threatened to release the information.
"The new object, temporarily named 2003 UB313, is about three times as far from the Sun as is Pluto. It is currently nine billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away from the Sun as Earth. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges from 2.7 billion miles to 4.6 billion.
"'This is the first object to be confirmed to be larger than Pluto in the outer solar system.'"
"Brown's best estimate is that the object is 2,100 miles wide, about 1-1/2 times the diameter of Pluto. The object is inclined by a whopping 45 degrees to the main plane of the solar system, where most of the other planets orbit. That's why it eluded discovery: nobody was looking there until now, Brown said.
"Brown has submitted a name for the new planet to the International Astronomical Union, which has yet to act on the proposal, but he did not release the proposed name Friday.
"Brown labeled the object as a 10th planet, but there are scientists who dispute the classification of Pluto as such. There is no official definition for a planet and setting standards like size limits or orbital patterns potentially invites other objects to take the 'planet' label.
"Brown and colleagues Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University first photographed the object in 2003 using a 48-inch telescope at the Palomar Observatory. But it was so far away that its motion was not detected until data was analyzed again this past January. It will take at least six months before astronomers can determine its exact size."
"Some astronomers view 2003 UB313 as a Kuiper Belt object and not a planet. The Kuiper Belt is a region of frozen objects beyond Neptune. Pluto is called a Kuiper Belt object by many astronomers.
"Brown himself has argued in the past for Pluto's demotion from planet status, because of its diminutive size and eccentric and inclined orbit. But today he struck a different note.
"'Pluto has been a planet for so long that the world is comfortable with that,' Brown said in the teleconference. 'It seems to me a logical extension that anything bigger than Pluto and farther out is a planet.'
"Offering additional justification, Brown said 2003 UB313 appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. That's not the case with other large Kuiper Belt objects, however...
"Brian Marsden, who runs the Minor Planet Center where data on objects like this are collected, says that if Pluto is a planet, then other round objects nearly as large as Pluto ought to be called planets. On that logic, 2003 UB313 would perhaps be a planet, but it would have to get in line behind a handful of others that were discovered previously.
"'I would not call it the 10th planet,' Marsden told SPACE.com.
"Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, called the discovery 'a major step.' But Boss would not call 2003 UB313 a planet at all. Instead, he said Pluto and other small objects beyond Neptune should be called, at best, 'Kuiper Belt planets.'
"'To just call them planets does an injustice to the big guys in the solar system,' Boss said in a telephone interview.
"The 'new planet' will be visible during the next six months and it [can be observed] almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus."
"A map shows the position of 2003 UB313 in the eastern sky as of about 1:30 a.m. from mid-northern latitudes for the next several days [in summer 2005]. Seasoned amateur astronomers with large backyard telescopes should be able to find it."
Will the real Planet X please stand up?
mr damon, 07:33
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