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Hindu God Points Way To Planet X
Paris (AFP) May 23, 2001 Varuna was detected last November by Arizona-based astronomers in the Spacewatch Project, a scheme aimed at scouring the asteroid belts to look, in part, for rogue rocks that could be a potential threat to Earth. The spherical object is 900 kilometers (550 miles) in diameter, which makes it only a tad smaller than Charon, the tiny moon (1,200 kms, 750 miles, across) that orbits Pluto, the most distant of the Sun's nine known planets. The discovery, by a team led by David Jewitt of the Institute of Astronomy in Honolulu, is reported Thursday in Nature, the British science weekly. Until 1992, Pluto and Charon were the only known objects beyond Neptune, but since then, more than 400 other Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered beyond Neptune. This region on the outskirts of Sol is often dubbed the Kuiper Belt or in more formal astronomical nomenclature "Trans-Neptunian Objects." These are believed to be ancient ring of icy worlds that were formed from the outer reaches of material that swirled around the infant Sun billions of years ago. Over the past decade astronomers have begun to suspect the belt could hold hundreds of thousands of rocks 100 kms (60 miles) across, and possibly billions of others 10 kms (six miles) across. The biggest handicap to identifying them has been the poor reflectivity of these objects. They are so far from the Sun that solar rays are terribly weak, and many of the objects themselves are dark, which means that they reflect very little light to enable astronomers to identify and measure them. In Varuna's case, the asteroid was easy to spot because it shone brightly, thanks to its reflective surface. In a commentary, US-based astronomers Stephen Tegler and William Romanishin said they were excited by the discovery of Varuna. It could vindicate the US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who in 1930 found "Planet X," the long-suspected ninth planet of the Solar System, and named it Pluto, but continued his search of the outer solar system in the belief that other planets were still to be discovered, they said. "Their work raises the possibility that Pluto is not the only Planet X, but perhaps one of several," said Tegler and Romanishin. "(...) We can now imagine that bodies even larger and more distant than Pluto will be found." Other discoveries could come with the launch of a space-based telescope in 2002 to measure the infrared emissions of distant objects, something that is difficult to accurately achieve from the Earth because of the filtering effect of our planet's atmosphere, they said. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Kuipers at University of Hawaii Research and Links by Jewitt SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Space
Satellite Launch To Boost DTH In India
Calcutta, India (SPX) Dec 28, 2005The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India. |
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