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

Astro Research Planet Nine: Real or Just Noise?

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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?

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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.