I have an idea on how to find the ninth planet .

[Ags]

Ah, I only meant that Triton was probably a captured TNO, and maybe one day Pluto will join it in orbit around Neptune.

[Mr Spock]

There are probably hundreds of objects still out there to be discovered. I'm not hopeful of a planet sized object though.

[Carbon Brush]

21 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

There are probably hundreds of objects still out there to be discovered

Agree absolutely.

Reading these discussions, there are some semi-related memories that I recall.

Within our family we have a set of encyclopedia, published in the 1920s.
There is no Pluto. The planets (and known distant objects) stop at Neptune!

Around 2004 I attended a course by a local astro society. At the time the first named object beyond Pluto had been located.
There was talk of maybe another one, or two. There are now rather more!

When NASA planned to launch New Horizons to flyby Pluto, they thought they ought to take a closer look at the destination.
In doing so they discovered more moons. The huge (compared to the other moons) Charon had only been known since 1978!

More recently I read of someone in the UK being involved in constructing a solar system model. Planets on plinths with explanations, spread around a village.
I forget the exact details. The Sun was about football size and Pluto a biro ball size about 3KM distant!
Just how do you find similar gravitationally insignificant, tiny and dark objects?
Off topic. I think if Alpha Centauri been included in the model, the plinth would have been in California!
 

[Zermelo]

4 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

Within our family we have a set of encyclopedia, published in the 1920s.
There is no Pluto. The planets (and known distant objects) stop at Neptune!

It was the same for Gustav Holst. Removing Pluto from the list has had the accidental benefit of re-aligning with his suite.

 

6 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

More recently I read of someone in the UK being involved in constructing a solar system model. Planets on plinths with explanations, spread around a village.
I forget the exact details.

Was it this one?

[Ags]

34 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

There are probably hundreds of objects still out there to be discovered.

More like millions

 

[badhex]

@Michael Kieth Adams @Bugdozer On the subject of orbits being cleared and other specific IAU criteria for definition of a planet, there was an excellent thread last year which might be of interest:

 

Edited January 30 by badhex

[Bugdozer]

On 29/01/2024 at 10:40, Carbon Brush said:

Agree absolutely.

Reading these discussions, there are some semi-related memories that I recall.

Within our family we have a set of encyclopedia, published in the 1920s.
There is no Pluto. The planets (and known distant objects) stop at Neptune!

Around 2004 I attended a course by a local astro society. At the time the first named object beyond Pluto had been located.
There was talk of maybe another one, or two. There are now rather more!

When NASA planned to launch New Horizons to flyby Pluto, they thought they ought to take a closer look at the destination.
In doing so they discovered more moons. The huge (compared to the other moons) Charon had only been known since 1978!

More recently I read of someone in the UK being involved in constructing a solar system model. Planets on plinths with explanations, spread around a village.
I forget the exact details. The Sun was about football size and Pluto a biro ball size about 3KM distant!
Just how do you find similar gravitationally insignificant, tiny and dark objects?
Off topic. I think if Alpha Centauri been included in the model, the plinth would have been in California!
 

It's interesting reading books from the past where things are yet to be discovered. I am lucky enough to have inherited an original edition if John Herschel's book from the 1830s, in which he speculates on the distances of the stars being "many hundreds of miles" and Saturn's rings being a solid opaque substance - and of course there's no mention at all of Neptune, with Uranus having been discovered by his father as the last planet. Although I am unsure if Ceres was still considered a planet at that time. 

[Mircea]

Nobody asked my opinion on this matter but willy-nilly you will find it here.

I don't have proofs because I'm not a player in the field of search of Planet 9.

But I spent about two month reading, thinking and writing about Chad Trujillo, Scott Sheppard,  Konstantin Batygin, Mike Brown, Sedna, Goblin, clusterig, Farout, Farfarout, Antranik Sefilian, J.R. Touma and so on.

It was quite natural to gain an opinion, a ''belief'' about Pluto / Pluton.

 

To cut a long story short, I think Mustil is right.

Pluto is a complex body with solid core, liquid oceans , atmosphere, seasons, climates with weathering,  geological life (earthquakes, earth slides) , five satellites ... because it is a captured PLANET.

Hints :

- the very eccentric orbit of Pluto / Pluton

- the 120 degree tilt of his axis related to the orbit plane,

-the tilt of the orbit of Pluto relative to Ecliptic

- the fact that is even crossing the orbit of Neptune

- the retrograde motion of Triton is also pointing toward a cataclysmic encounter , could be the same 

 

Just have a look at some diagrams here. You will see the position of the axis of Pluto and the shape and tilt of his orbit at ''The Basics'' here:

https://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Pluto/The-Pluto-System.php?link=Phases-and-Seasons

 

To me all this hints are supporting the caption hypothesis. It is possible that we have a guest body from outside the Solar System which can be studied.

But no, we will not do that because of the laughable criteria '' he did not cleaned his orbit ''.

 

( I really don't care about the bla-bla regarding the demotion of Pluto. Demoted or not by meaningless humanity , a celestial body keep looking the same. 

 I'm disgusted that astronomers at IAU are doing politics not Science any more.

I can prove it with a print screen of the Inbox of our Astronomy club. It is full with invitations to IAU zoom meetings to discuss things, mostly political, having nothing to do with Stargazing.

 And by the way , the famous demotion was voted by ''the majority'' of the five percent of membership who attended that meeting of IAU. )

 

Mircea

 

 

 

 

[Michael Kieth Adams]

There may not be a ninth planet but something has changed expected orbits in the area.  As to a large planet not forming in this part of the solar system, current theories have the large planets moving all over the place and if I have understood correctly, the math works better with another large planet which was apparently expelled.  Maybe not so much!   The Romanians may be correct but if we look we will learn something even if not what we were looking for.  All knowledge is valuable and of worth.  Thank you all for this wonderful discussion.  Michael K. Adams

[Jules Tohpipi]

All this talk of Planet X, I can remember when we used to call it Planet Twitter. 

[Gfamily]

On 27/01/2024 at 22:37, Marvin Jenkins said:

To add more. I was watching a Brian Cox video about explanet research and it turns out that planetary systems like ours are extremely rare compared to what has been observed.

In fact we are an extremely rare set of circumstances. Why is that, when many of the systems should be similar?

Yes, a system like ours is rare compared to what has been observed, but given our methods of discovery exoplanets, I strongly suspect that we would find it difficult to identify the majority of systems that were similar to ours. Of course, it's possible that we are 'rare', but we don't have the tools to know for sure. 

[JeremyS]

On 27/01/2024 at 16:11, Marvin Jenkins said:

I would contend that most if not all instruments are not looking for X.

Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto with equipment that is considered almost stone age by modern standards.

I understand that there are billion dollar systems doing all sky surveys on a 24 hrs basis but planet X is not what they are designed to find.

Also just saying... Planet X might not exist at all. 

M

But the surveys are looking: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.17977

[Mr Spock]

Found it -

There might be a rebel base there though 

[badhex]

8 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Found it -

There might be a rebel base there though