Wirt, You always give us such interesting information. After a Conservative/Liberal debate it is a good respite. Thanks

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 -----Original Message-----
From:   Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent:   Monday, March 15, 2004 2:02 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:             Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Tenth planet in the solar system?

Phil writes:

> Scientists may have discovered the solar system's most distant object,
> more than three times farther away from the sun than Pluto.
>
> The object -- about 8 billion miles (12.8 billion kilometers) from Earth --
> has been given the provisional name of Sedna, after the Inuit goddess who
> created sea creatures of the Arctic.

Here's the NASA press release on the subject:

=======================================

Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington                                        March 15, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1727)

Jane Platt
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/354-0880)

RELEASE: 04-091

MOST DISTANT OBJECT IN SOLAR SYSTEM DISCOVERED

     NASA-funded researchers have discovered the most distant object
orbiting Earth's sun. The object is a mysterious planet-like body three
times farther from Earth than Pluto.

"The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely
block it out with the head of a pin," said Dr. Mike Brown, California
Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., associate
professor of planetary astronomy and leader of the research team. The
object, called Sedna for the Inuit goddess of the ocean, is 13 billion
kilometers (8 billion miles) away, in the farthest reaches of the solar
system.

This is likely the first detection of the long-hypothesized "Oort
cloud," a faraway repository of small icy bodies that supplies the
comets that streak by Earth. Other notable features of Sedna include
its size and reddish color. After Mars, it is the second reddest object
in the solar system. It is estimated Sedna is approximately three-
fourths the size of Pluto. Sedna is likely the largest object found in
the solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.

Brown, along with Drs. Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, Hawaii
and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., found the
planet-like object, or planetoid, on Nov. 14, 2003. The researchers
used the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Caltech's Palomar
Observatory near San Diego. Within days, telescopes in Chile, Spain,
Arizona and Hawaii observed the object. NASA's new Spitzer Space
Telescope also looked for it.

Sedna is extremely far from the sun, in the coldest know region of our
solar system, where temperatures never rise above minus 240 degrees
Celsius (minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit). The planetoid is usually even
colder, because it approaches the sun only briefly during its 10,500-
year solar orbit. At its most distant, Sedna is 130 billion kilometers
(84 billion miles) from the sun, which is 900 times Earth's solar
distance.

Scientists used the fact that even the Spitzer telescope was unable to
detect the heat of the extremely distant, cold object to determine it
must be less than 1,700 kilometers (about 1,000 miles) in diameter,
which is smaller than Pluto. By combining available data, Brown
estimated Sedna's size at about halfway between Pluto and Quaoar, the
planetoid discovered by the same team in 2002.

The elliptical orbit of Sedna is unlike anything previously seen by
astronomers. However, it resembles that of objects predicted to lie in
the hypothetical Oort cloud. The cloud is thought to explain the
existence of certain comets. It is believed to surround the sun and
extend outward halfway to the star closest to the sun. But Sedna is 10
times closer than the predicted distance of the Oort cloud. Brown said
this "inner Oort cloud" may have been formed by gravity from a rogue
star near the sun in the solar system's early days.

"The star would have been close enough to be brighter than the full
moon, and it would have been visible in the daytime sky for 20,000
years," Brown explained. Worse, it would have dislodged comets farther
out in the Oort cloud, leading to an intense comet shower that could
have wiped out some or all forms of life that existed on Earth at the
time.

Rabinowitz said there is indirect evidence that Sedna may have a moon.
The researchers hope to check this possibility with NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope. Trujillo has begun to examine the object's surface with one
of the world's largest optical/infrared telescopes, the 8-meter (26-
foot) Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. "We
still don't understand what is on the surface of this body. It is
nothing like what we would have predicted or what we can explain," he
said.

Sedna will become closer and brighter over the next 72 years, before it
begins its 10,500-year trip to the far reaches of the solar system.
"The last time Sedna was this close to the sun, Earth was just coming
out of the last ice age. The next time it comes back, the world might
again be a completely different place," Brown said.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif, manages the Spitzer
Space Telescope. For more information about the research and images on
the Internet, visit:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2004-05

For information about NASA on the Internet, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

=======================================

Wirt Atmar

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