Mysterious Dwarf Planet Found Outside Solar System

First Posted: Nov 16, 2015 10:47 AM EST
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A team of astronomers have found a mysterious dwarf planet, which is believed to be three times further from the Sun than Pluto. Astronomers claimed that the dwarf planet could be one of the most distant objects within the solar system.

"It could end up joining an emerging class of extreme solar system objects whose strange orbits point to the hypothetical influence of rogue planets or nearby stars," the researchers wrote in a news release.

The newly found dwarf planet was identified as V774104 during a meeting at the American Astronomical Society. The researchers believe that this discovery could be a clue to the existence of other rugged planets in nearby celestial worlds.

The researchers made the discovery using Japan's Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. At the moment, V774104 is 15.4 billion kilometers (9.6 billion miles) from the Sun. This dwarf planet's distance is 103 astronomical units (AU) from the sun (one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun). In 2005, researchers identified the furthest celestial object, Eris, which was a dwarf planet, located 97 AU away from the sun.

"The discovery of V774104 is more proof that the solar system is bigger than we thought," said Joseph Burns, a professor of engineering and astronomy at Cornell University. "We need a little more time to pin down the orbit and determine the object's exact size, but it must be big to see it at this distance."

V774104's orbit is still unknown, according to Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, who also discovered the dwarf planet.

The findings of this study were published in the journal Science.

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