Almost 140 New Minor Planets Found In Our Solar System
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Discovery of 139 new Trans Neptunian Objects (TNOs).
- A new method helpful for future researches developed by the Physics graduate, Pedro Bernardinelli.
- Data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) formed the basis of the months long research and the new discovery.
The universe never ceases to awe the mankind with its endless new possibilities discovered by us every now and then. The recent discovery of the new new Trans Neptunian Objects, as published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, has opened up a fresh sea of possibilities for further findings about our solar system.
A Physics graduate from the University of Sao Paulo, Pedro Bernardinelli, has developed a new method based upon the 4 years data-set of the DES. He used 7 billion ‘dots’ of all the objects identified by the software, and boiled it down to a list of 139 objects which were observed for at least six nights in the southern sky.
This method and data were then verified to be authentic. Bernardinelli developed a way to arrange several images, such that a sharper image could be attained to filter the fake objects and identify the real new Trans Neptunian Objects. It will be applied to almost 5.5 years of the DES data and has given rise to the speculations among the astrophysics fraternity, that this may lead to the findings of roughly 500 new TNOs, and the hypothetical ninth planet in the near future. Even the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory would detect more and more new objects with this method.
Pedro Bernardinelli says, “Making the catalogue is the fun discovery part. Then when you create this resource, you compare what you did find to what somebody’s theory said you should find.” Till date, 316 new Trans Neptunian Objects are found in all, 245 mentioned in the DES catalogue previously and 139 new ones that remained unpublished in it. Pluto’s distance from the Sun is 40 times more than the distance of Earth from the Sun. These new new Trans Neptunian Objects are found to be 30 to 90 times farther from sun as compared to Earth. Therefore, this new study will help us identify what the images cannot capture clearly
