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Scientists have discovered the farthest body ever seen in our solar system – more than 100 times farther away than the Earth from the Sun.
The new object, discovered by Scott S Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, David Tholen of the University of Hawaii and Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University in the United States, received the provisional designation 2018 VG18. 2018 VG18, nicknamed "Farout" by the team because of its extremely remote location, stands at about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
The second object furthest from the observed solar system is Eris, at about 96 AU. Pluto is currently about 34 AU, making 2018 VG18 more than three and a half times farther than the world's most famous solar system planet.
2018 VG18 was discovered as part of ongoing research by the team of extremely remote solar system objects, including the alleged planet X, sometimes also called planet 9.
In October, the same group of researchers announced the discovery of another distant object of the solar system, called 2015 TG387 and nicknamed "The Goblin" because it was first seen near Halloween.
The goblin was discovered at around 80 AU and has an orbit consistent with the influence of an invisible X-planet the size of a Super-Earth, located on the periphery far removed from the solar system.
The existence of a ninth major planet at the periphery of the solar system was first proposed by this same research team in 2014 when it discovered the 2012 VP113, dubbed Biden, which is currently close to 84 AU.
2015 TG387 and 2012 VP113 never approach enough of the giant planets of the solar system, like Neptune and Jupiter, to have significant gravitational interactions with them.
This means that these extremely distant objects can be probes of what is happening in the confines of the solar system. As the team is not yet very familiar with VG18's orbit in 2018, it has not been able to determine if it shows signs of Planet X formation.
"2018 VG18 is much farther and moves slower than any other object in the solar system. It will take a few years to fully determine its orbit, "said Sheppard.
"But it was found at a similar place in the sky to other known objects of the extreme solar system, suggesting that it could have the same type of orbit as most of them," he said. he declared.
"The orbital similarities exhibited by many of the known and remote small bodies of the solar system have been the catalyst for our initial assertion that there is a distant and gigantic planet at several hundred AUs grazing these smaller objects ", he added.
"All we currently know about 2018 VG18, is its extreme distance from the Sun, its approximate diameter and color," Tholen said.
"Because 2018 VG18 is so far away, it is spinning very slowly in orbit, which probably takes more than 1,000 years to go around the Sun," he said.
Discovery footage of VG18 2018 was taken at the 8 meter Japanese Subaru telescope at the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii on November 10, 2018.
2018 VG18 was seen for the second time in early December at the Magellan Telescope of the Carnegie Observatory of Las Campanas in Chile.
Over the next week, the researchers monitored VG18 2018 with the Magellan telescope to secure its path in the sky and obtain its essential physical properties, such as brightness and color.
Magellan's observations confirmed that 2018 VG18 is close to 120 AU, making it the first object in the solar system observed above 100 AU. Its luminosity suggests that it is about 500 km in diameter, which probably makes it spherical and a dwarf planet. It has a pinkish hue, a color usually associated with objects rich in ice.
First published: December 18, 2018 3:15 PM IST
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