A team of space scientists at the University of Michiganhas discovereda dwarf planet that is approximately half the size of Pluto and twice as far from the sun. The sighting wasreportedby NPR, which interviewed team lead physicist David Gerdes. He told them credit goes to a group of students who were challenged to find some new objects to add to the ongoing construction of a galaxy map. Their efforts led to software that can be used to analyze imagery from the Dark Energy Camera (the camera used as part of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey). It looks for objects that are moving in any given patch of sky—a sure sign that they are in our solar system.
The dwarf planet newly named 2014 UZ224 is so small—just 330 miles across—that the team is not certain it will retain its status as a dwarf planet, but for now, it joins Makemake, Sedna, Eris and, of course, Pluto, as knowndwarf planetsthat exist in our solar system. It is also really far from us—approximately 14 billion kilometers—and quite far from the sun, taking approximately 1,140 years to make just one orbit. That puts it squarely in the Kuiper Belt along with countless other small objects and beyond the pull of Neptune’s gravity.
由团队开发的软件允许跟踪移动物体，而不捕获连续夜晚拍摄的图像，允许新的“连接点”，揭示夜空中的运动。但工作很缓慢 - 它花了两年来积极识别新的矮人星球（因此名称的日期），但Gerdes希望新的软件可能有助于找到其他这样的机构，也许甚至可能是神秘的星球九个在我们太阳系远远外面的地球尺寸的10倍10倍的地球。几项研究发现，其他天体对象受到看不见球员的动作的影响，并且大多数领域都怀疑它是一个很大的星球。太空科学家认为，准确地映射太阳系可能会更好地了解其起源。
Filed Under:航空航天+防御
