{"id":18224,"date":"2018-12-17T18:44:59","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T10:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/farout-astronomers-identify-the-most-distant-known-object-in-our-solar-system\/"},"modified":"2018-12-17T18:44:59","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T10:44:59","slug":"farout-astronomers-identify-the-most-distant-known-object-in-our-solar-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/farout-astronomers-identify-the-most-distant-known-object-in-our-solar-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Farout! Astronomers identify the most distant known object in our solar system"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_468955\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-468955\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-468955\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181217-farout-630x412.jpg\" alt=\"Farout\" width=\"630\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181217-farout-630x412.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181217-farout-768x502.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181217-farout.jpg 974w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-468955\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows the distant object known as 2018 VG18 or \u201cFarout.\u201d (Carnegie Institution for Science Illustration \/ Roberto Molar Candanosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Astronomers say they\u2019ve discovered the most distant body ever observed in our solar system, a potential dwarf planet that\u2019s about 11 billion miles from the sun.<\/p>\n<p>Its nickname? \u201cFarout.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The far-out object \u2014 which is also known by its more official but less colorful designation, 2018 VG18&nbsp;\u2014 was detected with Japan\u2019s 8-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii during a campaign to look for extremely distant solar system objects, including a hypothetical Planet X or Planet Nine.<\/p>\n<p>Further observations to confirm Farout\u2019s distance and determine its brightness and color were made with the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes at the Carnegie Institution for Science\u2019s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The observations were reported today in a circular distributed by the International Astronomical Union\u2019s Minor Planet Center.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery team includes Carnegie\u2019s Scott Sheppard, the University of Hawaii\u2019s David Tholen and Northern Arizona University\u2019s Chad Trujillo. NAU\u2019s Will Oldroyd assisted with the follow-up observations.<\/p>\n<p>Farout\u2019s orbit isn\u2019t yet known well enough to determine exactly how far out it will eventually get, or whether it could have been perturbed by the gravitational influence of an as-yet-unseen object that\u2019s several times more distant from the sun. Planet X\u2019s existence has been inferred because of a pattern of eccentricities seen in the orbits of other objects on the solar system\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c2018 VG18 is much more distant and slower moving than any other observed solar system object, so it will take a few years to fully determine its orbit,\u201d Sheppard said in a news release. \u201cBut it was found in a similar location on the sky to the other known extreme solar system objects, suggesting it might have the same type of orbit that most of them do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"'Farout\u2019 Discovered! Farthest Observed Object In Our Solar System\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GWStJ7VcXIo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The object\u2019s current distance from the sun is about 120 astronomical units, with each of those units representing the 93-million-mile distance between Earth and the sun. In comparison, Pluto is about 34 AU from the sun. The dwarf planet Eris is currently the second-farthest-out solar system object at a distance of 96 AU. Yet another object known as Sedna is currently 90 AU from the sun, but traveling in a highly eccentric orbit that takes it more than 10 times farther out as it makes its 11,400-year rounds.<\/p>\n<p>Millions of solar system objects are much farther out than Farout, in a cometary halo known as the Oort Cloud. However, those objects are too far out to be individually identified.<\/p>\n<p>Sheppard and his colleagues suspect that Farout is a 300-mile-wide dwarf planet similar in makeup to the Saturnian moon Enceladus, based on a pinkish color that\u2019s typically associated with ice-rich objects.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll that we currently know about 2018 VG18 is its extreme distance from the sun, its approximate diameter, and its color,\u201d Tholen said. \u201cBecause 2018 VG18 is so distant, it orbits very slowly, likely taking more than 1,000 years to take one trip around the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, told GeekWire in an email that the discovery of Farout proves the value of the hunt for Planet X.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe still don\u2019t know whether Planet X really exists, but in the search for it, astronomers have found the most distant body yet discovered in our solar system,\u201d Vakoch wrote. \u201cFarout is the first object discovered beyond 100 AU&nbsp;\u2014 a hundred times the distance between the Earth and Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows the distant object known as 2018 VG18 or \u201cFarout.\u201d (Carnegie Institution for Science Illustration \/ Roberto Molar Candanosa) Astronomers say they\u2019ve discovered the most distant body ever observed in our solar system, a potential dwarf planet that\u2019s about 11 billion miles from the sun. Its nickname? \u201cFarout.\u201d The far-out object \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2840,5102,5103,5104,1563],"class_list":["post-18224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dwarf-planets","tag-farout","tag-planet-nine","tag-planet-x","tag-solar-system"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}