A team of researchers from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington (USA) has discovered a new dwarf planet, called 2012 VP113 and provisionally named Biden , which is located at the limits of the solar system, 80 times ( in astronomical units or AU) further from the Sun than Earth is, making it the farthest object in our solar system.
The first conclusions, published in the journal Nature , suggest that this planet is perhaps up to 10 times the size of Earth and that it is probably one of the thousands of distant objects that make up the inner region of the Oort Cloud, where it probably some comets have originated. On this “edge” of the solar system, only one known object, Sedna, was present with its entire orbit.
The finding of “Biden” proves that it is even further away than Sedna , since its orbit is maintained even after that of this object, so it has just usurped the title of the most distant known object in the solar system.
Its location was made possible by the new Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4-meter NOAO telescope in Chile, which has an unprecedented ability to search large areas of the sky for faint objects. In addition, the 6.5-meter Magellan telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory was used to determine the orbit of 2012 VP113 or Biden and obtain information about its surface.
“This is an extraordinary result that redefines our understanding of our Solar System,” says study co-author Linda Elkins-Tanton, director of Carnegie’s Department of Earth Magnetism.
“The search for these distant objects within the Oort cloud beyond Sedna and 2012 VP113 should continue as they can tell us a lot about how our Solar System formed and evolved,” says Scott Sheppard, Carnegie Researcher and one of the lead authors of the study.
Image credit: S.Sheppard / Carnegie Institution for Science
