Cosmic objects with strange orbits discovered beyond Neptune

livescience.com ^ | 9/13/2021 | Stephanie Pappas

[BenLurkin]

Of the 461 objects described for the first time in the new paper, a few stand out. Nine are known as extreme trans-Neptunian objects, which have orbits that swing out at least 150 AUs from the sun. Four of those are extremely extreme, with orbital distances of 230 AUs. At these distances, the objects are hardly affected by Neptune's gravity, but their strange orbits suggest an influence from outside the solar system. Some researchers think that influence might be a yet-undiscovered planet, dubbed Planet Nine. (Others think that the combined gravity of lots of little objects, or, alternatively, nothing more than a statistical anomaly, explain the weird orbits.) The newly discovered objects could thus help researchers hone in on the possible Planet Nine — or disprove its existence.

The researchers also found four new Neptune Trojans. Trojans are bodies that share the orbits of a planet or moon. In this case, the objects share Neptune's orbit around the sun. They also observed the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, named after the two lead authors of the paper, University of Pennsylvania cosmologist Gary Bernstein and University of Washington postdoctoral scholar Pedro Bernardinelli. The two researchers were the first to spot the comet in the Dark Energy Survey dataset. The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet may be up to 100 miles (160 km) wide. It hails from the Oort cloud, another layer of icy objects even more distant than the Kuiper Belt.

At least 155 of the newly discovered objects are what astronomers called "detached." This means that they are far enough from Neptune that the large planet's gravity doesn't affect them much; instead, they're mostly tied to the solar system by the distant pull of the sun. Detached objects, sometimes known as extended scattered disc objects, tend to have huge elliptical orbits.

[SunkenCiv]

Tweak #2.

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[SunkenCiv]

GIANT comet is on its way! (C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein)
July 17, 2021
VisibleDark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH0tq1yAlz0

C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein - A giant icy visitor from the edge of our solar system is on its way. Thought to be a rare long-period comet that swings into the inner Solar System from the distant Oort Cloud. Astronomers estimate this comet takes roughly three to five million years to make one complete orbit of the sun.

[jpsb]

I don’t believe there is a (distance) limit on gravity. So the Sun’s gravity carries way more then 1 ly. But the inverse sq rule is a hard master.

[SunkenCiv]

Could the strange orbits of small, distant objects in our solar system lead us to a big discovery? Planetary astronomer Mike Brown proposes the existence of a new, giant planet lurking in the far reaches of our solar system -- and shows us how traces of its presence might already be staring us in the face.

The search for our solar system's ninth planet | Mike Brown | December 20, 2019 | TED