
A Friend for Pluto: Astronomers Find New Dwarf Planet in Our Solar System - daegloe
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/11/497071139/a-friend-for-pluto-astronomers-find-new-dwarf-planet-in-our-solar-system
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M_Grey
330 miles... that seems so small, and it's _so_ far away. It would be a truly
haunting experience to stand on that surface and look at the faint pinprick of
Sol.

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ssijak
A little bit smaller and it would be a dwarf planet where Little prince could
live :)

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M_Grey
I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who's mind went to Saint-Exupery!

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bobbles
It would be great if they went into more detail on how the 'spot the
difference' system works

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toxican
I'm sure one day we'll be able to discuss Dwarf Planets without getting weepy
eyed for Pluto, right?

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1024core
Is the image data publicly available?

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japaget
Yes, see here:[http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~gerdes/2014_UZ224.html](http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~gerdes/2014_UZ224.html)

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1024core
I just see a couple of samples there. I'd like to know if the images collected
by the telescope are publicly available in the original format.

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jason_slack
Can someone explain how we find planets like this? New advancements in
telescopes? I also recently read that Hubble has found 10 times more galaxies
than expected. How does this happen?

Any reading material on how these discoveries are made?

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peter303
Hint of Planet X, something much larger than Pluto in the Kuiper belt,
approaching the size of Earth. The evidence are several Kuiper objects with
aligned, very eccentric orbits. If Planet X is in the outer range of its
orbit, it may be too faint to seen with current telescopes.

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caf
I guess this is why my Astrology charts have been wrong all this time!

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LyalinDotCom
If there is one thing that inspires me in this life, it's news like this.

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1ris
Articles like this pop out often and they do not make sense. There are
constantly news about "New Dwarf Planets" and they are almost all wrong.

First of all, the definition of "dwarf planets" does not make any sense. It
was introduced because of the historic mistake to classify Pluto as a planet
and americans being emotional about correcting that. The definition is "a
dwarf planet is asteroid the IAU considers to be popular enough". Right now
there are five objects that fullfill these criteria: Ceres, Pluto, Eris,
Makemake and Haumea.

This new found is obviously not in this list, just like hundreds of other
objects that are like other so called "dwarf planets".

The correct headline is: "New asteroid found". Sounds way less spectacular.
But the truth is there are not only five know objects like this, but way, way
more.

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restalis
Quoting from Wikipedia¹: "[asteroid and planetoid terms have been applied to]
any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a
planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet",
which means we don't quite know yet if it's an asteroid/planetoid or a dwarf
planet. You may be right about the introduction of "dwarf planet" having
something to do with Americans being emotional about Pluto, but the
diversification of terms coming as a result of increased amount of knowledge
in a domain is something natural.

¹
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid)

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1ris
No, we know for sure it's not a draw planet because it's not in the IUA's list
of dwarf planets. Just like literally hundreds of objects that have dwarf
planet properties, but are not as popular.

And I'm not against diversification of terms at all. It's just that draw
planet seems to be a quite arbitrary term used for arbitrary objects.

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noselasd
Which are these hundreds of objects are you referring to ? It seems to me most
of the currently known larger objects arn't in hydrostatic equilibrium, and
thus not qualified to be called a dwarf planet.

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1ris
> is estimated that there may be 200 dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt of the
> outer Solar System[1][needs update] and possibly more than 10,000 in the
> region beyond.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_dwarf_planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_dwarf_planets)

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qb45
You have every right to claim that IAU is slow in recognizing newly discovered
dwarf planets, especially if they actually are, but please support this with
some list of objects verified to satisfy DP definition and not yet recognized
by IAU.

What you gave is some Wikipedia list of objects "most likely to be dwarf
planets" and some estimate of the number of _undiscovered_ dwarf planets,
which has nothing to do with IAU liking or not liking these objects.

Furthermore, from "dwarf planet" on Wiki:

 _only two of these bodies, Ceres and Pluto, have been observed in enough
detail to demonstrate that they actually fit the IAU 's definition._

Though if one reads further,

 _The IAU accepted Eris as a dwarf planet because it is more massive than
Pluto. They subsequently decided that unnamed trans-Neptunian objects with an
absolute magnitude brighter than +1 (and hence a diameter of ≥838 km assuming
a geometric albedo of ≤1) are to be named under the assumption that they are
dwarf planets._

so maybe you are right about IAU and their list of dwarf planets being a mess.

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SamBam
It seems pretty reasonable. Basically, barring further evidence, all the
evidence points to Eris as being a dwarf planet, because objects larger than
Pluto almost certainly meet the other criteria.

The IAU is allowing other object to be listed as dwarf planets if it's a very
strong likelihood that they are, without having to send a probe to each one.

