News on Minor Planets
- Dawn reveals asteroid Vesta’s role in solar system history
- Analysis of Vesta's chemistry
- Mountain on Vesta produces terrestial meteorites
- Comlpex molecules on Plutos surface
- Is Vesta really a small Earthlike planet?
- Dawn spirals to lovest orbity around Vesta
- Pluto's minor-planetary twin Eris
- Giant mountain on Vesta
- New images and video of Vesta
- Discovery of ice and possibly methane on distant dwarf-planet
- New moon discovered around Pluto
- Neptune celebrates its 1-year anniversary
- A day on a giant gas-planet
- Astronomers observe rare occultation of planet and its moon
- SOFIA observes challenging Pluto occultation
- First sights of asteroid Vesta
- The dwarf planet Haumea
- First glimpse of Vesta
- Pluto extensive atmosphere
- Scientists suggests a large planet may be hiding in our solar outskirts
- Minor-planet Eris has more atmosphere than Pluto
- Tritons summersky full of CO and Methane
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Scientists suggests a large planet may be hiding in our solar outskirts
Monday, 21 February 2011 22:36
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| Solar system - Minor planets |
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They present updated dynamical and statistical analyses of outer Oort cloud cometary evidence, suggesting that the Sun has a wide-binary jovian mass companion. Their results support a conjecture that there exists a companion of mass of 1-4x Jupiter masses, orbiting in the innermost region of the outer Oort cloud. The most restrictive prediction is that the orientation angles of the orbit plane in galactic coordinates are centered on X, the galactic longitude of the ascending node = 319o and i, the galactic inclination = 103o (or the opposite direction) with an uncertainty in the orbit normal direction subtending <2% of the sky. Such a companion could also have produced the detached Kuiper Belt object Sedna. If the object exists, the absence of similar evidence in the inner Oort cloud implies that common beliefs about the origin of observed inner Oort cloud comets must be reconsidered. Evidence of such a large planet would have been recorded by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which has completed its primary mission and is continuing on secondary objectives. Source: University of Louisiana |




Two american scientistshas calculated that a large Jupiter mass planet may be hiding in the gap between Pluto and the inner Oort cloud of comets