A new objective has been give away that orb the Sun in the most remote trajectory known in our Solar System so far .
Ten days ago an object namedSednawas discovered which debase our previously defined Solar System boundaries . Sedna was discover to be three times further from the Sun than Pluto ; at its furthest point in orbit it is 130 billion kilometer away , and at its close 13 billion kilometers from the Sun . Pluto is found in the Kuiper belt , which is a realm filled with tens of K of frozen bodies ; Sedna lives in a realm outside of this called the Oort cloud . This is where the newfangled object , named2012 VP113 , was found . The termination were published in the journalNatureyesterday .
2012 VP113 is probably a gnome planet , and was discovered by scientists Chadwick Trujillo and Scott Shepperd whilst searching for distant objects with a Dark Energy Camera . They noticed this physical object during their first reflexion , and were able to track it for month until they could decrypt its full orbit . Intriguingly , despite Sedna do in cheeseparing propinquity to the Sun during sure metre of its orbit , 2012 VP113 only reaches 452 astronomic units ( AU ) at its farthest point from the Sun , whereas Sedna can hit as far as 1,000 AU . One AU is approximately 150 million kilometers , to give you some mind of how far away that is , and is the mean Earth - Sun space .
2012 VP113 was found to be more or less half the sizing of Sedna , and is portend to be preponderantly composed of chicken feed . One hypothesis that could explain the locating of these objects within the Solar System is that a large traveling major planet knock out some objects whilstpassing through theKuiperbelt .
These discoveries are easy altering melodic theme of the birth of our solar system of rules . " It give-up the ghost to show that there ’s something we do n’t know about our Solar System , and it ’s something of import , " said astronomer Trujillo . " We ’re start to get a taste of what ’s out beyond what we weigh the border . "
It is thought that both Sedna and 2012 VP113 could be members of the Oort cloud ; collectively the objects within this region could outnumber all other dynamically stable populations in the Solar System . The scientist are currently following another 6 target which could also be distant members of our Solar System .
