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Solar system’s farthest-out known object is … Farout

Farout
An artist’s conception shows the distant object known as 2018 VG18 or “Farout.” (Carnegie Institution for Science Illustration / Roberto Molar Candanosa)

Astronomers say they’ve discovered the most distant body ever observed in our solar system, a potential dwarf planet that’s about 11 billion miles from the sun.

Its nickname? “Farout.”

The far-out object — which is also known by its more official but less colorful designation, 2018 VG18 — was detected with Japan’s 8-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii during a campaign to look for extremely distant solar system objects, including a hypothetical Planet X or Planet Nine.

Further observations to confirm Farout’s distance and determine its brightness and color were made with the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The observations were reported today in a circular distributed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

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Looking for Planet 9? There’s an app for that

Image: Planet X
An artist’s conception shows Planet X, a.k.a. Planet Nine. (Credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Inst.)

Citizen scientists can join an online hunt for icy worlds, brown dwarfs and other yet-to-be-discovered objects beyond the orbit of Neptune, using a technique that’s not all that different from the method that led to Pluto’s discovery 87 years ago.

“Backyard Worlds: Planet 9” could even lead to the discovery of a super-Earth that may (or may not) be hidden on the solar system’s far frontier. The icy world known as Planet Nine or Planet X is only theoretical for now, but its existence would explain some of the puzzles surrounding the weird orbits of some far-out objects.

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Hunt for Planet Nine leads to mini-worlds

Image: Planet X
An artist’s conception shows Planet X, a.k.a. Planet Nine. (Credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Inst.)

The hypothetical world known as Planet X or Planet Nine hasn’t yet been found, but thanks to the search, astronomers have discovered smaller worlds on the solar system’s edge.

Mapping such objects could lead to the big discovery: a planet that’s thought to be at least several times bigger than Earth, lurking at least 200 times farther away from the sun. Or it could lead to a different explanation for the puzzling, highly elongated orbits of some of the objects that lie far beyond Pluto.

Planet Nine’s existence was proposed last year as the most elegant way to account for the orbits of worlds such as Sedna and 2012 VP113 (which has been nicknamed “Biden” in honor of the veep). Ever since then, astronomers have been surveying the skies in hopes of tracking it down.

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The case for Planet Nine (a.k.a. Planet X)

Image: Planet Nine
An artist’s conception shows a “super-Earth” far from the sun. (Credit: R. Hurt / IPAC / Caltech)

For decades, astronomers have gone back and forth over whether a “Planet X” exists on the edge of our solar system – and now two researchers have laid out new evidence supporting the claim, including a rough idea of where it could be found.

One of the most notable things about the claim has to do with one of the people who’s making it: Mike Brown, the Caltech astronomer who says he “killed” Pluto when it was the ninth planet.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” Brown said in a news release. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be the third.”

Brown’s “two true planets” refer to Uranus and Neptune, not Pluto. To emphasize the point, Brown and his collaborator at Caltech, Konstantin Batygin, have nicknamed the object “Planet Nine.” (Other nicknames are said to include George, Planet of the Apes, Jehoshaphat and Phattie.)

There’s one big gap in the argument: No such object has yet been detected.

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Planet X? Probably not, despite the buzz

Image: Distant world
An artist’s conception shows the dwarf planet Eris. Astronomers say an even larger world may exist on the solar system’s edge. (Credit: NASA / JPL / Caltech)

An array of radio telescopes in Chile has picked up weird readings that appear to be coming from far-out objects – and that’s sparked a debate over whether they’re previously undetected worlds on the edge of our solar system, brown dwarfs, or just random glitches.

Readings from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, or ALMA, have led to the posting of at least two research papers on the arXiv pre-print server. Historically, some of the studies that scientists post to arXiv go on to make a splash, while others fizzle out.

One study, submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, reports detecting an object in submillimeter wavelengths that’s close to the same position in the sky as the Alpha Centauri binary-star system, and moving along with it.

Could it be yet another star associated with Alpha Centauri? The researchers rule out that scenario on the grounds that it hasn’t been seen before in other wavelengths.

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