Distant Dwarf Planet Discovered Just Beyond Neptune

A tiny dwarf planet was recently found tumbling through space in the distant part of our solar system. The ball of rock and ice lies nine billion kilometers away - further than even Neptune.

Newly discovered dwarf planet #RR245 takes 700 years to orbit the sun https://t.co/yjjWJXcmCe pic.twitter.com/5jQCgSC3mz

— CNN (@CNN) July 12, 2016

Astronomers noticed the planet when it appeared as a bright spot moving across a sequence of images taken by a telescope in Mauna Kea in Hawaii, for the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) in last September 2015.

Michele Bannister, an astronomer on the team shared in a statement, "It was really remarkable to see how bright this object was. It's far brighter than the objects we normally find."

The National Geographic noted that the dwarf planet - which is only about half the size of Great Britain, orbits the sun every 700 years. It is small - smaller than that of Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and Ceres, which are the other currently recognized dwarf planets. Currently named 2015 RR245, it is currently among the 10 biggest unnamed objects of the outer solar system. The new world is only about 435 miles (700 kilometers) wide, and is orbiting in the Kuiper belt - which is the disk of icy bodies far beyond Neptune.

Bannister also mentioned that the icy worlds help scientists piece together the history of the Solar System - if only they are seen more often. She said, "almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint: it's really exciting to find one that's large and bright enough that we can study it in detail."

Around 200 dwarf planets are expected to be in the vicinity of the Kuiper Belt. CNN noted that the huge mass of comets and frozen rocks orbiting the sun are among the ones observed beyond Neptune. Still, Bannister noted that these worlds are fascinating for the stories that they could tell.

These tiny planets are important in the study of our solar system. As Pedro Lacera of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast told The Guardian, these are the closest things we could get to time capsules as they could transport us to the birth of our solar system.