Astronomers find potential candidate for planet nine in data with 40 years

A team of astronomers that analyzed ancient astronomical data may have seen a candidate for the elusive planet nine – a hypothetical ninth planet of the solar system, far beyond Neptune orbit.

In 2016, two Astronomers da Caltech They showed evidence that six objects besides Neptune’s orbit were grouped in a way that suggested that they were being “pastored” by something with a great gravitational attraction. Since then, Konstantin Batygin, Mike Brown and others tried to look for this planet.

According to it, although it remains indescribable, many astronomers believe it could explain riddles such as the slope of the orbit of long -term objects of the Kuiper belt and the objects that orbiting the sun backwards between the giant planets.

“This could also make our solar system a little more ‘normal’,” explains the NASA. “Planets research around other stars in our galaxy has found that the most common types are ‘super-land’ and their cousins-larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune. However, none of this type exists in our solar system. Planet nine would help fill this gap“.

Although we found thousands of exoplanets – or planets that orbit other stars -, Finding planets on our own solar system is not so easy. We can see the effect that an exoplanet has on its star through its gravitational influence or simply blocking the light of the star of our perspective and making it weaker, among other methods.

But in our own solar system, and from the point of view of the earth, Only Venus and Mercury pass in front of the sun. Planets large enough and close to the sun to reflect sunlight, such as Jupiter and Saturn, were sighted while orbiting the sun, while neptune, much farther, was discovered through its gravitational effect on uranus.

O – if it really exists – is expected to be far beyond Neptune orbit, perhaps the 500-700 astronomical (UA) units of the sunand an AU is the distance between the earth and the sun. At these distances, despite the enormous size, it would not reflect much sunlight for us.

But in a new article, a team tried to look for evidence from the planet analyzing Data covering decades of two infrared research from the sky.

“We sought candidates for planet nine in a heliocentric distance from 500 to 700 AU and in a mass of 7 to 17 m⊕, using two surveys from the whole sky in the distant infrared with a difference of 23 years,” the team explains in his article, which has not yet been reviewed by peers.

“The PL is expectedAneta Nove Se Mova Lentamente in the sky due to its great distance beyond Neptune orbit. Therefore, we look for objects of slow motion that moved from a position to another Akari position after 23 years. ”

The team initially found 13 candidates who deserved a more detailed inspection, before Reduce this list to only one.

“After a strict selection, including the visual inspection of the images, we found a good pair of candidates, in which the Iras Fountain was not detected in the same position in the Akari image and vice versa, with the expected angular separation of 42 ′-69.6 ′,” the team explained.

“Akari’s probability of detection probability indicated that the Akari source of our candidate satisfied the requirements for a slow motion object with two detections on a date and no detection on six months earlier. ”

Although the team believes that the candidate justifies additional investigationsthe data is not sufficient to predict the orbit of the object, if it is the elusive planet nine. More observations will be needed to get closer to the planet, if it exists.