'Farout': Mauna Kea telescope helps discover solar system's most distant object

Astronomers have discovered a far-out world circling the sun.

How far out? It’s so far out that the discoverers nicknamed it “Farout.” All they can see is a pinkish dot of light in the night sky, but that is enough to infer that they are looking at a 300-mile ice ball orbiting more than 11 billion miles from the sun — more than three times as far out as Pluto, and the farthest object ever observed within the solar system.

It is the latest revelation in a distant region that was once expected to be empty, and studying its trajectory may help point to an as-yet-unseen ninth planet circling the sun far beyond Neptune.

Today, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery and gave this object the designation 2018 VG18.

Read more: http://www.staradvertiser.com/2018/12/17/breaking-news/mauna-kea-telescope-helps-discover-solar-systems-most-distant-object/


This image provided by the Carnegie Institution for Science shows an artist’s concept of a dwarf planet that astronomers say is the farthest known object in our solar system, which they have nicknamed “Farout.” The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of the pink cosmic body today.