Planet 9? Is it real?

[Dave1]

So what's everybody's thoughts on planet 9 being a possibility? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/national/health-science/is-there-a-mysterious-planet-nine-lurking-in-our-solar-system-beyond-neptune/2018/08/31/1957c8ca-a495-11e8-8fac-12e98c13528d_story.html

My thoughts are it's going to be like trying to find a needle from a hay stack using past data. I personally think building a dedicated instrument to look for planet nine is the way to go. Guess we will have to wait ten years! 

[mikeDnight]

Its absoloutly real! Planet 9 was discovered a lifetime ago. It's just the political paper pushers trying to justify their pointless existance who are in denial. I've attached a quick pic through my i-phone and 30mm finder as evidence, and a more detailed close-up through my 100mm frac. ?

IT'S COLD OUT THERE!

 

[Stu]

Well if 'dwarf' planet 9 exists already, surely so do 10 and 11 (can't recall how many spherical asteroids there are!)? So this would be 12? Sounds like a big challenge anyway.

[Dave1]

The article is mainly refering to a massive planet bigger than earth that may be effecting the orbit of other planets in our solar system.

[Stu]

True enough Dave. I must say somehow it seems unlikely to me, but who knows what is out there. I can well believe there are plenty of other Pluto-like worlds out there, but it seems out of kilter with the rest of the Solar System for there to be a huge gap after Pluto and then another large planet.

[Dave1]

It does seem strange that a big planet would be further out than Pluto and the Kelpier belt. But I can see the point the article makes at how hard a planet would be to detect a 1000AU.

@mikeDnight love the photo of the inhabitants lol, so has Pluto been reclassified as a major planet then

[Peter Drew]

Bodes "law" bodes well.   ?

[Kn4fty]

I had watched a documentary at work last week that said the disturbance in the orbit of Neptune was a mistake. It was saying there was a screw up in the mathmatics and there was no disturbance. The scientists were saying it was pure luck that Pluto was located where the "math" indicated. ?

[SIDO]

Most likely hundreds of spherical worlds between Pluto and the bowshock, the farther out one gets the area of search is ever increasing. 1000au out wich makes the search area twice that × 3.14 to encompass plus the hypothetical target's orbit extending even beyond that. The search area is large indeed. My belief though is if planet nine at a predicted 11 x the size of Earth would have already been found if the surface was highly reflective, so I think the object if it exists will be a dark planet. But out that far most of them will be ?

[SIDO]

Interesting there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 spherical bodies from the Sun out to and just beyond Pluto. Not bad, for 400 years or so of observations.

[Peter Drew]

How much does it really matter? I've never yet pinpointed Pluto as far as I know so I won't be spending much time looking for a more elusive body.   ?

[Whirlwind]

11 hours ago, SIDO said:

Most likely hundreds of spherical worlds between Pluto and the bowshock, the farther out one gets the area of search is ever increasing. 1000au out wich makes the search area twice that × 3.14 to encompass plus the hypothetical target's orbit extending even beyond that. The search area is large indeed. My belief though is if planet nine at a predicted 11 x the size of Earth would have already been found if the surface was highly reflective, so I think the object if it exists will be a dark planet. But out that far most of them will be ?

 

Even a reasonably reflective planet would be extremely dim at the distances they are talking about.  The magnitude would likely be fainter than 22.5 unless it was made from an unreasonably reflective material that we have never seen on a planet surfaces.  Magnitude 22.5 is faint and needs a large telescope.  Consider SDSS that just about gets a reasonable signal from mag 22.5 objects.  However at this magnitude there are millions of field stars; as well as piles of rubble that would all flag up in any search.  If the object is hiding in the galactic place it gets even worse.  Trying to find planet 9, if there, is difficult to do (finding pluto was easy by comparison).  

There is precedent in exoplanet systems for planets to be at such distances.  Large jovian type planets have been detected at 1000's AU from their parent star.  However if a planet this small was found to exist at this distance it does open questions to planetary evolution.  It could have been kicked out by interactions in the inner solar system  early on is one possibility.  Models currently find it difficult to create a super earth at this distance.  There are two main formation mechanisms through to exist. Gravitational collapse (similar to how a star forms) is one method but must occur distant from he parent star and is though to be the main way large planets can form at large distances.  Otherwise there is gravitational interactions and accretion dusts -> grains -> pebbles -> planetissimal -> planet (and then if large enough capture of gas to make giants).  If the planet kicked out is the mass and radius suggested then there is a possibility that it could have been the core of a pre-Jovian planet.  But we need to find it first. 

 

 

[rockystar]

For all you Pluto adovactes - it deserved it! Having said that, we all know that it exists,  so what does it really matter what designation it has?  Why not see it as "King of the Dwarves" instead of this piddley rock trying to be a real planet?

As for the new Planet 9 - I believe it. The main reason being that it predicted a whole host of bodies on a tangential plane and when they went looking for them,  they were found.

[Dave1]

19 hours ago, Kn4fty said:

I had watched a documentary at work last week that said the disturbance in the orbit of Neptune was a mistake. It was saying there was a screw up in the mathmatics and there was no disturbance. The scientists were saying it was pure luck that Pluto was located where the "math" indicated. ?

I hadn't of heard there this theory about the maths being wrong? I wouldn't even want to try the maths! 

I had heard the theory that the disturbance in Neptune's and even Saturn orbit I think? Was natural and nothing out of the ordinary. 

[SIDO]

6 hours ago, Whirlwind said:

 

Even a reasonably reflective planet would be extremely dim at the distances they are talking about.  The magnitude would likely be fainter than 22.5 unless it was made from an unreasonably reflective material that we have never seen on a planet surfaces.  Magnitude 22.5 is faint and needs a large telescope.  Consider SDSS that just about gets a reasonable signal from mag 22.5 objects.  However at this magnitude there are millions of field stars; as well as piles of rubble that would all flag up in any search.  If the object is hiding in the galactic place it gets even worse.  Trying to find planet 9, if there, is difficult to do (finding pluto was easy by comparison).  

There is precedent in exoplanet systems for planets to be at such distances.  Large jovian type planets have been detected at 1000's AU from their parent star.  However if a planet this small was found to exist at this distance it does open questions to planetary evolution.  It could have been kicked out by interactions in the inner solar system  early on is one possibility.  Models currently find it difficult to create a super earth at this distance.  There are two main formation mechanisms through to exist. Gravitational collapse (similar to how a star forms) is one method but must occur distant from he parent star and is though to be the main way large planets can form at large distances.  Otherwise there is gravitational interactions and accretion dusts -> grains -> pebbles -> planetissimal -> planet (and then if large enough capture of gas to make giants).  If the planet kicked out is the mass and radius suggested then there is a possibility that it could have been the core of a pre-Jovian planet.  But we need to find it first. 

 

 

With all that being said 99% reflectivity is the max for a spherical body in this solar system, but for magnification and object need not be at great distance to be mag 22.5 just needs to be small, Ceres has salts that if covered the whole planet 100% reflectivity I'm guessing here would be achievable. But visable light not is not the only wavelength set being used to search for the mysterious planet 9. Here is a c and p of the brightest solar system objects.

 

 

 

Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn has the most reflective surface of any body in the solar system. Its surface is covered by fresh ice supplied by water geysers in the southern hemisphere. The second most reflective body in the solar system is the minor planet Eris. This object orbits the sun once every 550 years. The orbit is highly eccentric, e=.44, with a distance ranging from 97 AU to 38 AU. These two objects reflect 99% and 96%, respectively, of incident light.

[Kn4fty]

1 hour ago, Dave1 said:

I hadn't of heard there this theory about the maths being wrong? I wouldn't even want to try the maths! 

I had heard the theory that the disturbance in Neptune's and even Saturn orbit I think? Was natural and nothing out of the ordinary. 

I wish I knew the name of the documentary. It was interesting and I'd like to see it again.

[SIDO]

How dark do planets get? Exoplanets are giving up some hints of how low reflectivity can go...

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-04-darkest-planets.html

[Whirlwind]

2 hours ago, SIDO said:

With all that being said 99% reflectivity is the max for a spherical body in this solar system, but for magnification and object need not be at great distance to be mag 22.5 just needs to be small, Ceres has salts that if covered the whole planet 100% reflectivity I'm guessing here would be achievable. But visable light not is not the only wavelength set being used to search for the mysterious planet 9. Here is a c and p of the brightest solar system objects.

You are correct that other wavelengths can be used.  Indeed the distant exoplanets were found in the IR rather that visible reflected light.  Most have been found around newly formed stars and hence the planets have relatively recently only formed.  As they get older they cool and that makes things harder from the ground and then requires a dedicated space telescope.  That introduces additional problems.  Unless the telescope is huge then your resolution is poor and hence have issues with confusion (multiple objects merging in pixels).  You could use the JWST but that has a small field of view and it would be an expensive telescope for just a hunch.

[SIDO]

2 hours ago, Whirlwind said:

You are correct that other wavelengths can be used.  Indeed the distant exoplanets were found in the IR rather that visible reflected light.  Most have been found around newly formed stars and hence the planets have relatively recently only formed.  As they get older they cool and that makes things harder from the ground and then requires a dedicated space telescope.  That introduces additional problems.  Unless the telescope is huge then your resolution is poor and hence have issues with confusion (multiple objects merging in pixels).  You could use the JWST but that has a small field of view and it would be an expensive telescope for just a hunch.

We are already looking for the remaining planets out to the bowshock so all hunches are indeed the target's in this broad and extensive search. Some planets though are not cool even at great distance from their host star and are magnetically active, this is true even in our own system. My opinion has always been neutral as to weather or not planet 9 is real or just a theoretical extrapolation but it is a lot of fun exploring what is possible or at least lies within the realm of possibility.

[SIDO]

Here is an interesting article from 2016 regarding a new object with an orbit stretching out to 1600au, the article also mentions theoretical inner and outer ort clouds wich is an idea that has been tossed about for years. The object was discovered at it's closest approach to earth and probably would not have been found otherwise.

https://www.universetoday.com/16961/astronomers-find-a-new-minor-planet-near-neptune/

[F15Rules]

On 03/09/2018 at 20:43, Peter Drew said:

Bodes "law" bodes well.   ?

Puns like this always give me a sense of foreboding..maybe the SGL mods should forbode them from being used!

Dave

[LukeSkywatcher]

The 9th planet is Pluto.

See..............its right there: