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 |  Subject: New Data About Two Distant Asteroids Suggest Connection With Mysterious ‘Planet Nine’  Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:16 am | |
| New Data About Two Distant Asteroids Suggest Connection With Mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
February 28, 2017 by SkyWatch Editor
 The dynamical properties of these asteroids, observed spectroscopiccally for the first time using the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS, suggest a possible common origin and give a clue to the existence of a planet beyond Pluto, the so-called ‘Planet Nine.’ […] Now, a team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid has taken a step towards the physical characterization of these bodies, and to confirm or refute the hypothesis of Planet Nine by studying them. The scientists have made the first spectroscopic observations of 2004 VN112 and 2013 RF98, both of them particularly interesting dynamically because their orbits are almost identical and the poles of the orbits are separated by a very small angle. This suggest a common origin, and their present-day orbits could be the result of a past interaction with the hypothetical Planet Nine. This study, recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that this pair of ETNOs was a binary asteroid which separated after an encounter with a planet beyond the orbit of Pluto. (READ MORE) |
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