New Dwarf?

StarDate

A third of a century ago, we knew of only two solar-system bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune: Pluto and its largest moon. Today, the known population of such bodies is in the thousands. And quite a few of them are in the same class as Pluto itself: dwarf planets.

One of the newest members of that class is 2017 OF201. It was discovered in 2017. A recent study found that it may be about a third the size of Pluto. If so, then it most likely would qualify as a dwarf planet.

The object follows a highly elongated orbit around the Sun. It ranges from about 45 times to 1600 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. And it takes almost 25,000 years to complete a single orbit. Today, it’s about 90 times the Earth-Sun distance, and moving outward. Before long, it’ll be so remote that not even the biggest telescopes can see it.

Researchers say the object could be bad news for a possible Planet Nine. Studies of other objects in the outer solar system suggest that some of them may have been pushed around by the gravity of a much larger body. That body could be a planet roughly five to 10 times the mass of Earth, orbiting far from the Sun. But the orbit of 2017 OF201 shows no influence of such a planet.

There’s a lot to be done to understand the orbits of the bodies in the outer solar system – and use them to pinpoint a possible planet far from the Sun.

Script by Damond Benningfield