A team of astronomers announces that they have identified 139 new “transneptunian objects”, these small bodies evolving in the dark and icy depths of our system.
Transneptunian objects (TNO) are, by definition, all objects in the solar system whose orbit is located beyond that of the planet Neptune. These can be, for example, asteroids or planets dwarfs (Pluto is a perfect example). So far, astronomers have counted just over 2,800, but a recent survey has uncovered 139 additional objects, bringing the number of known NWTs to almost 3,000 now.
These new recordings were made possible thanks to the data collected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) between 2013 to 2017.
This program, using a 520-megapixel camera mounted on the Inter-American Observatory of Cerro Tololo, in Chile, aims to map hundreds of millions of galaxies in order to better understand the nature of the mysterious dark energy, responsible for acceleration of the expansion of the Universe.
It is this camera which, thanks to its capacities allowing to follow the movements of several hundreds of millions of objects, made it possible to reveal these new TNOs. After months of verification, the researchers isolated 316, more precisely, of which 139 were new to science.
All these cataloged objects, can we read in The Astrophysical Journal, are located at between 30 and 90 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. It is recalled that one AU is equivalent to the Earth-Sun distance, that is to say approximately 150 million kilometers. For comparison, Pluto, the best known TNO, evolves at around 40 AU from our star.
One step closer to the mysterious planet 9?
These “census” surveys are also very interesting insofar as they could give us clues to the existence (or not) of the mysterious planet 9.
In recent years, strange gravitational effects observed on transneptunian objects suggest that a planet could evolve well beyond the orbit of Pluto. This world, if it ever exists, would be at least ten times more massive than Earth and would circle the Sun in 20,000 years.
Despite these measurements, this hypothetical planet would emit very little light. This is why it would have gone so far completely unnoticed, however sensitive our telescopes are. The idea, to apprehend it, therefore consists in concentrating our efforts on the possible gravitational effects of this gigantic planet on its “neighbors”: the transneptunian objects.
Hence the importance of this new study. The more we are able to know the movements of these very distant objects, the more we will be able to detect possible anomalies in their trajectories. Anomalies which could then betray the presence of this planet.
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