New Dwarf Planet And Other Solar System News by Roger Pink

New Dwarf Planet Discovered

Astronomers have increased the size of the observable solar system after spotting a 450-km wide object orbiting the sun. The lump of ice and rock circles the sun at a greater distance than any known object, and never gets closer than 12bn kilometers - 80 times the distance from Earth to the sun.

If its size is confirmed it could qualify as a dwarf planet in the same category as Pluto. Researchers said the discovery proves the existence of the inner Oort cloud, a region of icy bodies that lies far beyond the orbit of Neptune - which at 4.5bn kilometers from the sun is the most remote planet in the solar system. Until a proper name is decided upon, the body is known only as 2012 VP₁₁₃. Its pink tinge comes from radiation damage that alters the make-up of frozen water, methane and carbon dioxide on the surface.

Though exciting in its own right, the discovery raises a more tantalizing prospect for many astronomers: that a "Super Earth" up to 10 times the mass of our planet orbits the sun at such a great distance that it has never been seen.

Three images of the newly discovered dwarf planet 2012 VP₁₁₃ taken about two hours apart on 5 November 2012. Photograph: Scott S Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

Astronomers found 2012 VP₁₁₃ by taking snapshots of the night sky an hour or so apart with an instrument called the Dark Energy Camera on the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory telescope in Chile. When they turned the images into a time-lapse movie of the sky, they could see the new body moving against the background of stationary stars.

"This object has the most distant orbit known," Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution of Washington told the Guardian. "It extends the known boundary of the observable solar system."

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Astronomers Discover Asteroid With Rings

For the first time ever, astronomers have discovered a ring system surrounding an asteroid. The finding is a complete surprise to planetary scientists, who are yet unsure exactly how such rings could have formed.

The cosmic bling was found around an object named Chariklo, which orbits in a region between Saturn and Uranus. At 155 miles across, or about the length of Massachusetts, Chariklo is the largest known asteroid in its neighborhood. Looking to get a better idea of its exact size and shape, astronomers trained their telescopes on the giant space rock as it passed in front on a distant star in June 2013. As Chariklo performed its eclipse, researchers noticed something odd: The star's light flickered just a bit immediately before and after Chariklo's pass.

The reason for this darkening was the asteroid's two dense rings, which had briefly blocked the starlight. The thicker inner ring is about four miles wide, while the thinner outer ring is a little less than two miles. Spectroscopic analysis of the starlight also revealed that the rings are composed partially of water ice.

The ice rings reflect light like a mirror, a property that helps explain an earlier anomalous finding regarding Chariklo. After the asteroid was discovered in 1997, its brightness mysteriously dropped off and only came back again in 2008. What apparently happened was that, as Chariklo moved through its orbit, its ring system turned edge-on when viewed from Earth. As they turned back to face us with their flat side, they reflected light toward our planet and Chariklo's brightness grew by 40 percent.

There are only four other known ring systems in our solar system - around Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and, most dramatically, Saturn - and all the other ones have formed around planets. Astronomers aren't yet sure if Chariklo's ring system makes it unique among asteroids. In recent decades, more than 10 other objects in its neighborhood have been searched using a technique similar to Chariklo's stellar eclipse but have not shown any rings.

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Scale Model of the Solar System (Moon=1 Pixel)

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

Visit the website and scroll to get a sense of the vastness of our Solar System.

That's it for now. A pretty exciting day in Solar System News. Till next time - Roger