Space & Astronomy

New dwarf planet found beyond orbit of Pluto

By T.K. Randall
October 13, 2016

Image: Artist's Concept of New Horizons
Credit: (PD) NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute Known as 2014 UZ224, the object was picked up by the Dark Energy Camera (DEC) in Chile which takes photographs of the sky at regular intervals as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) - an ongoing project which aims to probe the dynamics of the expansion of the universe.

At a mere 330 miles across, the new dwarf planet is a lot smaller than Pluto and is situated far out from the Sun at a distance of 8.5 billion miles, making it the third most distant object in the solar system behind Eris, which is larger than Pluto, and V774104, an object discovered in 2015.


Source: Wired.co.uk

Tags: Dwarf Planet