P1b.17d New planet discovered
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Look at the website printed below and then answer the questions that follow. It is from the NASA
website. NASA is America’s space research group and the web article is about finding a new planet in
our solar system.
NASA-Funded Scientists Discover Tenth Planet
A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system.
The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif.
The discovery was announced today by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA.
Image above: These time-lapse images of a newfound planet in our solar system, called 2003UB313, were
taken on Oct. 21, 2003, using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif.
The planet, circled in white, is seen moving across a field of stars. The three images were taken about 90
minutes apart. Scientists did not discover that the object in these pictures was a planet until Jan. 8, 2005.
Image credit: Samuel Oschin Telescope, Palomar Observatory
+ Highest resolution image available
+ More images
+ Quicktime (CC): Narrated overview of discovery
“The planet is a typical member of the Kuiper belt, but
its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets
means that it can only be classified as a planet,”
Brown said. Currently about 97 times further from the
sun than the Earth, the planet is the farthest-known
object in the solar system, and the third brightest of
the Kuiper belt objects.
“It will be visible with a telescope over the next six
months and is currently almost directly overhead in the
early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus,”
said Brown, who made the discovery with colleagues
Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna
Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University,
New Haven, Conn., on January 8.
Jane Platt (818) 354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.
Dolores Beasley (202/3581237/1753)
NASA Headquarters,
Washington
Robert Tindol (626) 395-3631
California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz first photographed the
new planet with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope
on October 31, 2003. However, the object was so far
away that its motion was not detected until they
reanalyzed the data in January of this year. In the last
seven months, the scientists have been studying the
planet to better estimate its size and its motions.
“It's definitely bigger than Pluto,” said Brown, who is a
professor of planetary astronomy.
Scientists can infer the size of a solar system object
by its brightness, just as one can infer the size of a
faraway light bulb if one knows its wattage. The
reflectance of the planet is not yet known. Scientists
can not yet tell how much light from the sun is
reflected away, but the amount of light the planet
reflects puts a lower limit on its size.
“Even if it reflected 100 percent of the light reaching it,
it would still be as big as Pluto,” says Brown. “I'd say
it's probably one and a half times the size of Pluto, but
we're not sure yet of the final size.”
“We are 100 percent confident that this is the first
object bigger than Pluto ever found in the outer solar
system,” Brown added.
The size of the planet is limited by observations using
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has already
proved its mettle in studying the heat of dim, faint,
faraway objects such as the Kuiper-belt bodies.
Because Spitzer is unable to detect the new planet,
the overall diameter must be less than 3,000
kilometres.
A name for the new planet has been proposed by the
discoverers to the International Astronomical Union,
and they are awaiting the decision of this body before
announcing the name.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Spitzer
Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Science operations are
conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.
Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more information and images see:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/new
planet-072905-images.html or
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomarnew/sot.html
For information about NASA and agency programs
on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.
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P1b.17d New planet discovered (continued)
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1 Who discovered the new planet?
2 How and where were the pictures taken?
3 How big is the new planet, and how do we know?
4 Why can’t we say for certain how big it is?
5 How do we know it must be less than 3000 km in diameter?
6 The Samuel Oschin telescope was built high in the mountains. Why?
7 The Earth is 150 million km from the Sun. How far was this new planet from the Sun when the
article was written?
8 What is the Kuiper belt and where is it?
9 The Samuel Oschin telescopes looks at visible light frequencies from the electromagnetic
spectrum. With what other parts of the spectrum might it be possible to observe this planet?
Explain why you think so.
10 The article is sometimes tricky to read because it keeps adding in details about where people
work, and who runs different observatories, listing many institutions. Why do you think these
details are included?
11 Write out the three most important quotes from Professor Brown.
12 List:
a the observations made
b the deductions made from these observations.
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