A dwarf planet with no name is a new friend of astronomers. It was found beyond Neptune, revolving around the sun in a wide orbit.
The new dwarf planet was spotted through a telescope at the top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Even though it was imaged in 2015, it was really noticed only in February this year.
The surface of the planet is not still understood, and a better view of that would help scientists to assess its size more accurately. Its body runs 435 miles across.
A number of dwarf planets were once found in the solar system, even though many were ejected or destroyed, as bigger planets shifted into their respective places. The RR245 is among other planets discovered in the distant edges of our solar system, such as Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Pluto and Ceres, writes Science Alert.
It stands out for its orbit and size, compared to other dwarf planets the scientists chanced upon in the Kuiper belt. The Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) discovery is the biggest so far, following the discovery of more than 500 trans-Neptunian objects.
The planet is called 2015 RR245 by the International Astronomical Union. Its elliptical orbit is so wide that it takes 700 earth years to finish one orbit. The planet moves away 120 times further away from the sun.
"The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun. They let us piece together the history of our Solar System. But almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint: it's really exciting to find one that's large and bright enough that we can study it in detail," researcher with OSSOS, Michele Bannister, said in a statement.
"They are the closest thing to a time capsule that transports us to the birth of the Solar System," astrophysicist Pedro Lacerda from Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, who wasn't involved with the discovery, told Ian Sample at The Guardian. "You can make an analogy with fossils, which tell us about creatures long gone."
