A newly discovered object, 2017 OF201, is the largest found in over a decade and follows an extremely elliptical orbit around the Sun that takes approximately 25,000 years to complete. The dwarf planet, approximately 700 kilometers wide, puts it in the same category as Pluto, Ceres, and other objects.
A team of astronomers led by Sihao Cheng analyzed data collected by the Dark Energy Camera to discover the object, which was hiding in terabytes of publicly available data. The discovery required months of computational work and a sophisticated algorithm to ferret out from background stars and noise.
The new object’s size and orbit make it difficult to predict its existence, but Cheng notes that finding it does not necessarily prove or disprove the Planet X hypothesis, which suggests the presence of an unknown major planet influencing the orbits of outer solar system objects. However, another coauthor, Konstantin Batygin, disagrees, stating that the object’s orbit would be unstable if Planet X existed.
The discovery highlights the complexity and challenges of searching for objects in the outer solar system. The team hopes to carry out follow-up observations to learn more about 2017 OF201’s details, possibly using the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.
Source: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/another-dwarf-planet-in-our-solar-system