Planet X May Exist – Extremely Distant Object Discovered Far Beyond Pluto

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – While searching for the elusive Planet X, astronomers have discovered an extremely distant object far beyond Pluto. The newly found object, called 2015 TG387, has an orbit that supports the presence of an even-farther-out, Super-Earth or larger Planet X.

2015 TG387 was discovered about 80 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, a measurement defined as the distance between the Earth and Sun. For context, Pluto is around 34 AU, so 2015 TG387 is about two and a half times further away from the Sun than Pluto is right now.

The new object is on a very elongated orbit and never comes closer to the Sun, a point called perihelion, than about 65 AU. Only 2012 VP113 and Sedna at 80 and 76 AU respectively have more-distant perihelia than 2015 TG387. Though 2015 TG387 has the third-most-distant perihelion, its orbital semi-major axis is larger than 2012 VP113 and Sedna’s, meaning it travels much farther from the Sun than they do.

At its furthest point, it reaches all the way out to about 2,300 AU. 2015 TG387 is one of the few known objects that never comes close enough to the Solar System’s giant planets, like Neptune and Jupiter, to have significant gravitational interactions with them.

“These so-called Inner Oort Cloud objects like 2015 TG387, 2012 VP113, and Sedna are isolated from most of the Solar System’s known mass, which makes them immensely interesting,” Sheppard explained.

“They can be used as probes to understand what is happening at the edge of our Solar System,” Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science said in a press statement.

The object with the most-distant orbit at perihelion, 2012 VP113, was also discovered by Sheppard and Trujillo, who announced that find in 2014. The discovery of 2012 VP113 led Sheppard and Trujillo to notice similarities of the orbits of several extremely distant Solar System objects, and they proposed the presence of an unknown planet several times larger than Earth–sometimes called Planet X or Planet 9–orbiting the Sun well beyond Pluto at hundreds of AUs.

“We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the Solar System’s fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult,” David Tholen from the University of Hawaii said.

“Currently we would only detect 2015 TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the Sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see.”

See also:

Planet X: Four Candidates For Planet X Located And Examined

Quest For Planet X Continues: Several Never Before Seen Objects Discovered Extremely Far Away From Our Sun

Earth’s Periodic Mass Extinctions Linked to Planet X – Researcher Says

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The object was discovered as part of the team’s ongoing hunt for unknown dwarf planets and Planet X. It is the largest and deepest survey ever conducted for distant Solar System objects.

“These distant objects are like breadcrumbs leading us to Planet X. The more of them we can find, the better we can understand the outer Solar System and the possible planet that we think is shaping their orbits–a discovery that would redefine our knowledge of the Solar System’s evolution,” Sheppard added.

2015 TG387 is likely on the small end of being a dwarf planet since it has a diameter near 300 kilometers. The location in the sky where 2015 TG387 reaches perihelion is similar to 2012 VP113, Sedna, and most other known extremely distant trans-Neptunian objects, suggesting that something is pushing them into similar types of orbits.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer