{"id":19268,"date":"2016-08-30T01:41:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T17:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/hunt-for-planet-nine-leads-to-mini-worlds\/"},"modified":"2016-08-30T01:41:29","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T17:41:29","slug":"hunt-for-planet-nine-leads-to-mini-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/hunt-for-planet-nine-leads-to-mini-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunt for Planet Nine leads to mini-worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Planet
An artist\u2019s conception shows Planet X, a.k.a. Planet Nine. (Credit: Robin Dienel \/ Carnegie Inst.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hypothetical world known as Planet X or Planet Nine hasn\u2019t yet been found, but thanks to the search, astronomers have discovered smaller worlds on the solar system\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n

Mapping such objects could lead to the big discovery: a planet that\u2019s thought to be at least several times bigger than Earth, lurking at least 200 times farther away from the sun. Or it could lead to a different explanation for the puzzling, highly elongated orbits of some of the objects that lie far beyond Pluto.<\/p>\n

Planet Nine\u2019s existence was proposed last year as the most elegant way to account for the orbits of worlds such as Sedna and 2012 VP113 (which has been nicknamed \u201cBiden\u201d in honor of the veep). Ever since then, astronomers have been surveying the skies in hopes of tracking it down.<\/p>\n

Among those astronomers are Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University. They were on the discovery team for 2012 VP113. Now they\u2019re part of a team conducting a survey using instruments such as the Dark Energy Camera on the NOAO 4-meter Blanco telescope in Chile and the Japanese Hyper Suprime Camera on the 8-meter Subaru telescope in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

So far the survey has covered nearly 10 percent of the sky.<\/p>\n