Another dwarf planet discovered in the solar system

Scientists have confirmed that the Solar System has another dwarf planet, located 13.6 billion km from the Sun.

The newly discovered dwarf planet, designated 2014 UZ224, has an orbit around the Sun every 1,100 years and will soon be classified as a dwarf planet along with Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and Pluto, Science Alert reported on October 12.

Newly discovered dwarf planet 13.6 billion years from the Sun. Illustration: Universe Today.

In addition to the five officially recognized dwarf planets, the Solar System is thought to have at least 100 of these planets in the Kuiper belt, the region far beyond the orbit of Neptune, home to comets, asteroids and small meteoroids.

Planet 2014 UZ224 was discovered by a team of students led by physicist David Gerdes at the University of Michigan, USA, in a map of giant galaxies under the Dark Energy Survey (DES) project.

To spot a solar system object in this vast map of distant galaxies, the team relied on motion observations. “When you look at objects in the solar system, you see them changing position in the sky,” Gerdes said.

The team then used specialized computer software to connect the observed bright spots and conclude that it was a single object. "We usually observe an object one night, then two weeks, five days, four months later. So connecting the data is a big challenge," Gerdes shared.

The discovery was confirmed by the International Astronomical Union, but it is not yet classified as one of the five current dwarf planets.

Any Kuiper Belt object with a diameter of more than 400 km can be considered a dwarf planet, explains California Institute of Technology astronomer Mike Brown, who successfully proved Pluto was a dwarf planet in 2006. 2014 UZ224 is estimated to have a diameter of about 530 km, so it will likely be classified as a known dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.

According to VNE