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After Pluto misplaced its planethood, we were down to eight planets. But there’s growing evidence of any other international (or worlds) out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Is Planet 9 out there and the way will we find it? Could there even be Show Notes picture
Aurora – 30 Minute Forecast (NOAA)
Ep. 410: Planet nine Facts and Fiction (Astronomy Cast)
Ep. 613: Pluto’s Demotion: 15 Years Later (Astronomy Cast)
Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Science)
The orbit of Planet Nine (Brown & Batygin)
Giant Comet Found in Outer Solar System by means of Dark Energy Survey (NOIRLab)
Meet the 42: ESO pics a number of the biggest asteroids in our Solar System (ESO)
Dog-bone asteroid Kleopatra makes a fetching portrait (EarthSky)
Evidence Indicates There’s Another Planet the Size of Mars in Our Solar System (Interesting Engineering)
Saturn Has a Fuzzy Core, Too (Sky & Telescope)
Transcriptions provided by using GMR Transcription Services
Fraser: Astronomy Cast Episode 615, The Search for Planet Nine. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly statistics-based adventure through the cosmos wherein we assist you apprehend what we recognize, but how we understand what we recognise.
I’m Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today. With me, as continually, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of CosmoQuest. Hi, Pamela, how are you doing?
Dr. Gay: I am doing well. There is a lot happening proper now. The day once we record this, Saturday, it’s International Observe the Moon Night. Next weekend is Hangout-a-thon. Fall is right here. Halloween. For the ones of you looking the video, Felix the Dragon is putting out at the back of me celebrating October. Life is ideal. Life. Is. Good.
Fraser: So, I want to shamelessly self-sell the solar these days, which is, of direction, we’re getting into – we’ve left the sun minimum. We are actually using in the direction of the solar most. And meaning auroras.
Dr. Gay: Oh.
Fraser: And so, we had an incredible aurora display that hit a huge bite of the Earth within the closing couple of days from while we’re recording this. I changed into really lucky. I had quite clear skies and could see auroras off at the horizon. Beautiful show I become capable of catch on my smartphone, of all matters. But people in New York State, humans in sort of a number of the middle latitudes had been capable of see it, as properly.
So, now’s the time if you are involved, in case you’ve in no way seen an aurora and you live, I could say, above the 35th parallel, then you definately have an excellent-ish hazard multiple instances a 12 months of being capable of see an aurora. But you’ve gotta be organized. So, get yourself acquainted with NOAA’s aurora alert. Find an app that you can placed on your telephone that’ll tell you whilst there’s aurora activity on your region.
Have a plan for an area you may go where you’ve got darkish skies and a view toward the appropriate pole. In our case, we wanna be capable of have a pleasant, darkish view to the north. If you live inside the Southern Hemisphere, you wanna a pleasant, dark view to the south. Plan this all out after which when the aurora hobby is peaking – and also you’re now not gonna experience like doing this; you’re gonna feel adore it’s cold and you don’t wanna exit – exit. If it’s clear skies, pass see it. And –
Dr. Gay: This is the only time you don’t want a hammock. And any of you who’ve been looking for some time realize I am a strong proponent of hammocks. But there are these sincerely exceptional infinity chairs, 0-gravity chairs, something you wanna name them, they’re ones that will let you lean again but no longer all of the manner. We will hyperlink to them in the show notes.
Get your self some thing this is exceptionally snug after which get insulation for underneath you and above you. Prepare to mummify your self. There are these top notch camping wraps which can be like snoozing baggage you could stroll in. This is what you need. This time of 12 months and March are the two times of year that you wanna exit and notice these things. It’s the high-quality alignments.
Fraser: Yeah. And you don’t – with a meteor bathe, say, the Perseid meteor bathe, you understand which you’re gonna be seeing meteors every minute or so. And so, you don’t must wait very long. But with auroras, you can exit and notice nothing. And then you may exit again and notice nothing. And then you can go out once more and notice only a faint hint at the horizon. But if you wait hours, three hours, you may get this sort of outstanding aurora shows in which the auroras are just dropping rain on pinnacle of you, the sky is dancing from horizon to horizon. And it’s an truely magical experience which you’ll in no way neglect.
But you received’t see it unless you get out in it. And so, it takes some education and it takes a few persistence, and it takes a sure quantity of just being willing to undergo at the same time as you anticipate the threat. But, I gotta say, once they show up, they’re like nothing else you’ve ever visible. So, if that’s on your bucket listing, then now could be the time to start preparing an movement plan to take benefit of it.
All proper. Let’s get into the display. So, after Pluto lost its planethood, we had been right down to eight planets. But there’s growing evidence of any other international or worlds out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Is Planet Nine obtainable? And how will we discover it? Could there also be a Planet Ten?
I wager we all know this. We talked about planet Pluto and its lack of planethood simply a couple of episodes in the past, a refresh. So, now, Planet Nine. And we have completed an episode on Planet Nine. But deliver type of the short version of what Planet Nine is.
Dr. Gay: Planet Nine is a global that has been maximum publicized by means of the crew of Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin who checked out the orbits of a collection of Kuiper Belt items that had outstanding weird orbits. And they ran a gaggle of fashions to look if there was a manner to explain those orbits and found out that one of the first-class methods to give an explanation for them become with a – to start with they calculated it out to be a ten Earth-mass either Earth-like international or Neptune-like world this is loads of astronomical devices, in all likelihood 200 to three hundred astronomical gadgets or instances the distance of the Earth to the Sun away. And is simply obtainable influencing these kind of smaller bodies to enter these weirdo orbits.
Now, they weren’t the only ones that came up with this concept. And people often forget about that even earlier, Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo had also give you the idea of searching at a exceptional set of screwed up orbits, the Kuiper Belt objects. They additionally postulated there is probably something else available, comparable mass. They had been the usage of one-of-a-kind objects in order that they were given slightly unique orbits. There’s a few controversy there that I suspect we’re gonna get to, however –
Fraser: A fight. Yeah, I become gonna mention that. That, of direction, their find out changed into met with top notch loss of skepticism, right? Their proposal that those worlds had been accessible. Everyone just fell in line and started working looking for them. No. No.
