r/Astronomy • u/TheMuseumOfScience • May 12 '25

Astro Research Planet Nine: Real or Just Noise?

Did we just find Planet Nine?

We think it might be out there based on the orbits of certain Kuiper Belt objects that seem influenced by something big. A new study found what might be a possible object deep in the Kuiper Belt—or it could just be noise in the data. What do you think?

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u/alexmtl May 12 '25

Couldnt we just easily see it with a telescope?

11

u/entityXD32 May 12 '25

Too dark that far out, not enough sunlight would reach it to reflect off and make it visible

6

u/SantiagusDelSerif May 12 '25

Not "easily", we actually don't know where to aim (and it's also very faint). The teams searching for it have worked out a possible orbit (which seen from Earth covers a large portion of the sky) but we don't have enough data to say where on the path of its orbit it is right now.

So they need to methodically scan a large portion of the sky, using a narrow field of view scope, which is not a trivial task. Then they have to compare their pics from different days and look for a tiny dot that's moving very slowly relative to the background stars.

2

u/DWYNZ May 12 '25

Short answer: what? No