![endless sky map endless sky map](https://bigskyrealestate.com/wp-content/uploads/1-4187.jpg)
Every star in the sky is like a grain of sand in which Planet Nine hides. Now throw it on the beach and try to refind it. When a Twitter user asked Brown why we can’t see Planet Nine, Brown answered: Pluto’s average magnitude is around 15, and it can only be seen by telescopes that are 10 inches or larger. But the average brightness of Planet Nine should be about magnitude 22. The closer the planet is to us in its orbit, the brighter it will be, and vice versa. The brightness of Planet Nine depends on where it’s located in its orbit at the time. Compare that to Earth’s orbital inclination, which is zero degrees, and Pluto’s, which is 17 degrees. Planet Nine’s orbital inclination, or how much it tilts away from the plane of the solar system, is around 16 degrees. They estimate Planet Nine to be about 6.2 Earth masses, with an orbit that takes it from 300 astronomical units ( AU, with 1 AU being the distance from Earth to the sun) out to 380 AU from the sun. Planet Nine: Just the statsįrom their calculations taken from Kuiper Belt Objects, the scientists came up with approximate figures for Planet Nine. This led them to parameters that show the most probable location for Planet Nine. They had to create a maximum likelihood model using a combination of numerical simulations and observations of each Kuiper Belt Object. The scientists also had to understand the observational bias in these objects (areas that surveys have heavily focused on versus areas that scientists have not examined as closely). The first step was to separate the tugs of Neptune on the objects from the pull of a more distant planet. Teasing out information from these distant objects took a number of steps.
![endless sky map endless sky map](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vcg8qv3nees/SfkZX5kMVfI/AAAAAAAADUM/GIbqoN-FLC8/s400/StarMap+1.jpg)
Many of these objects have eccentric orbits that Brown and Batygin believe are being affected by a distant and massive planet: Planet Nine. Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object, and so are Eris, Makemake and Haumea. Kuiper Belt Objects are icy bodies left over from the formation of the solar system that reside in an orbit out past Neptune. LijMt7kSWXīrown and Batygin examined the observations of all the known Kuiper Belt Objects with orbits affected by the unknown planet. So, where is Planet Nine? Let me show you the treasure map. The paper takes all of the observations of the outer solar system and tries to invert them to learn about the orbit and mass of Planet Nine in a statistically meaningful way. It is more likely to be at its most distant point from the sun, but only because it travels more slowly there. Sadly, the data only tell us the orbital path, not where in the orbital path it is (very sadly, actually). But where on that path is Planet Nine right now? As Brown said: The map shows a wavy line projected on the sky tracing out the most likely path of Planet Nine. Mike Brown’s handle on Twitter is He’s the author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. The peer-reviewed Astronomical Journal accepted their new study on August 22, 2021. And now they’ve produced a map showing where the planet should lie. Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, both of Caltech, announced in early 2016 that they had evidence for a Planet Nine – another major planet in our solar system – lurking somewhere in our solar system’s outer realm. Whose name will fill in the blank for the discovery of Planet Nine? Will it be you? Your search just got easier, as last week two scientists provided a map (above) showing the probable orbit of Planet Nine, and its probable location within that orbit. Johann Gottried Galle (and others) discovered Neptune in 1846.
![endless sky map endless sky map](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/20871346/31471231-6c9a4a0a-aead-11e7-826e-31b732fc4a69.png)
William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. Search in the red area, these astronomers suggest! Image via Mike Brown. That’s where Planet Nine would move most slowly and, therefore, spend most of its time. The red area indicates Planet Nine’s possible farthest region in orbit from our sun. It makes sense that Planet Nine would lie somewhere along that colorful wavy line, these astronomers say. The wavy black line that echoes the colorful curve is the ecliptic, or path of the sun, moon and known planets in our sky. The red area is the most likely location for Plane Nine, a hypothetical, undiscovered planet in our solar system, according to the 2 astronomers who proposed Planet Nine’s existence in 2016.