This artist's concept shows the planet catalogued as 2003UB313 at the lonely outer fringes of our solar system. Our Sun can be seen in the distance. The new planet, which is yet to be formally named, is at least as big as Pluto and about three times farth
Astronomers have discovered a new member of our solar system.1,2 The object is estimated to be slightly larger than Pluto and is the most distant object in our solar system to be detected so far. NASA is calling this object the “tenth planet.”3
With all the recent discoveries of planets orbiting other stars, it is exciting to find a new planet in our own solar system. The object (currently designated “2003 UB313” until it is assigned a permanent name) was discovered by astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz. It lies at the incredible distance of 9 billion miles (14 billion km) from the sun, nearly one hundred times farther away than Earth is, and more than twice as distant as Pluto. It is estimated to be about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) in diameter.
Several years ago, astronomers began discovering a number of large, icy masses just beyond the orbit of Neptune. These are...
