Pink world found lurking at edge of solar system

Oooo, just when you thought that particular part of the sky was lifeless and boring, along comes this little treat! "The Pink Planet!!!"

www.news.com.au...

PEERING into the far reaches of the solar system, astronomers have spied a pink, frozen world in a region of space beyond Pluto long considered a celestial wasteland
It’s lurking seven 12 billion kilometres from the sun and is the second such object to be discovered in the area. Until now, the lone known resident in this part of the solar system was an oddball dwarf planet spotted in 2003 named Sedna after the mythological Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic.

The latest discovery shows “Sedna is not a freak. We can have confidence that there is a new population to explore,” Yale University senior research scientist David Rabinowitz said in an email. He was one of Sedna’s founders, but had no role in the new find detailed in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
For years, astronomers hunted in vain for other Sednas in the little-studied fringes of the solar system.
The new object, 2012 VP113, was tracked using a new camera on a ground telescope in Chile by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. Trujillo was part of the team that found Sedna.
Like Sedna, VP is also a dwarf planet. It’s jokingly nicknamed “Biden” after Vice President Joe Biden because of the object’s initials. It measures about 450 kilometres across, or half the diameter of Sedna.
Unlike red and shiny Sedna, the new-found object is more pink and much fainter, which made it hard to detect.

Poor little 2012 VP113, what did it ever do to anyone? First it's called a "dwarf" and now it's nicknamed "Biden". Poor little guy.

Kidding aside, that looks like a gem of a find. It shows how little we know about our own solar system, let alone the entire universe. Hope this discovery leads to further finds. Perhaps we could even find some asteroids in the neighboring Oort Cloud and map out some orbits!

Man I was all excited thinking we had a new planet in the solar system. Still cool though!

reply to post by CaptainBeno


Let's get a Rover up there and start roving around pronto. We will find many an anomaly in those pink rocks.

In fact I can see an eagle's head right in the middle, a spine or two, and a bunch of fossilized spoke creatures:

long after i,m gone they will still be realizing they have no clue whats out there.

guess work and always will be,love how scientists say this is fact and everyone just believes......for me? all bull,they will never know anything for fact out there.

Aleister
reply to post by CaptainBeno

 

Let's get a Rover up there and start roving around pronto. We will find many an anomaly in those pink rocks.

In fact I can see an eagle's head right in the middle, a spine or two, and a bunch of fossilized spoke creatures:

edit on 26-3-2014 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

edit on 26-3-2014 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

I see the eagle head too , pretty cool . What is that pic of ?

Sedna and 2012 VP113 shouldn't exist with current solar system models, that is why they are oddballs. They might actually be from another Solar System, maybe rogue planets captured by our Sun. In current models rocky planets shouldn't form at edges of Solar System. Sedna has really weird orbit, very long and eccentric. It goes as far as 937 AU from Sun, and closest at 76 AU. Its orbit takes 11,400 years! Sedna reaches its closest point to Sun in 2076 and Sun will appear merely extremely bright star on its sky, about 100 times brighter than full moon. For comparison, Sun appears here 400,000 times brighter than full moon. Its very dark world.

Thebel
In current models rocky planets shouldn't form at edges of Solar System.

These aren't rocky planets, they are approximately 50% ice / 50% rock, or even mostly ice. And objects in Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud could have formed closer to the Sun and migrated outwards due to gravitational perturbations.

~~~

Back on topic, this is the first time I've seen VP113 being called pink. Are there any other sources stating this?

The eccentricity of Sedna's orbit is somewhat strange though. How did the orbit get so elongated when the perihelion distance is way beyond the orbits of the major planets (ie. anything with a gravitational force strong enough to perturb it into a highly eccentric orbit)?

reply to post by JHumm


The poor eagle looked upon the head of Medusa! The pic was one I chose when search-engine surfing for "Pink rock pictures" to place one on my post after I posted my first comment, so I have no idea where it actually exists. Maybe someone will recognize it.

Well, now we know where Richard Simmons came from!!

Seriously though, very amazing and I can't wait to learn more about it. Thanks for sharing!

Hi, this is Hello Kitty here. I am your master.

Kneel before Kitty.

reply to post by kathat


Or maybe it belongs to She-ra or is the outer reaches of My Little Pony Planet.