[karajorma]

In further proof that Pluto is nothing special astronomers have discovered yet another kuiper belt object of similar size.

Aparently they're calling it Sedna after an Inuit Goddess.

Read more here

[diamondgeezer]

I stopped regarding Pluto as a card-carrying planet some years back. I'd still be interested to get a probe out there to poke it a goodly bit, mind

[Flipside]

Great, someone found a rock. Charon would be quite interesting to look at, if only to confirm it used to be half of Pluto, I suppose that's the only interesting thing about Pluto, it's the only Binary Planet we know, though Earth isn't all that far off.

It's useful to science I suppose, but it still doesn't account for those discrepencies in the Outer Planet Orbits.

[kasperl]

more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(astronomical_object) as well.

and really, planetoid sounds a lot more correct then planet.

[T-Man]

I feel soo sorry for those astromoners. They spend all their lives finding "planet X" and end up finding some pathetic little ball of dust!

Blaise Russel's gonna need a new faction for Sol: A history

[Janos]

QUAOAR

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Flipside
Great, someone found a rock.

It's not just a roock. It's the rock furthest out from the sun!

[Liberator]

They think it has a moon!

It's funny that they can make such a proclamation like that given it's size and distance.  More likely the 'moon' is an obect with a similar orbit.

[kasperl]

they might just have looked at it's orbit, and saw it slightly wobbled, or something. just as they spot planets in extra solar systems.

[Bobboau]

yeah, you seem to think they just proclaim things like that becase it's fun.

[Flipside]

Make that 2 rocks

[karajorma]

Why shouldn't it have a moon? Pluto has one and is just the same thing only a little bigger.

EDIT : Here's a longer article about it from space.com

[Liberator]

They've know about it for 2 days max.  So unless they're using some kind of fancy secret gravitic sensor to study the relationship between the two objects, I'll hold off calling it a moon until they have definitive proof.

[Zuljin]

Originally posted by Liberator
They've know about it for 2 days max.  So unless they're using some kind of fancy secret gravitic sensor to study the relationship between the two objects, I'll hold off calling it a moon until they have definitive proof.

Sedna was first sighted in November 2003. Mike Brown (CalTech) and Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, spotted the worldlette through the 48-inch telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory.

thats 2 awfully long days I would say..

[Flipside]

Ummm... and if they can tell from the influence of gravity on other stars that planets are orbitting them, then doing it from much closer should be easier, I would have thought.

[Grey Wolf]

It would be, especially as a moon, even if it resembled the moons of Mars, would be a far higher percentage of the mass of the planetoid than practically any planet would be of a star.

[Dark_4ce]

I wonder when they're gonna find Rupert.

[Ace]

Originally posted by Zuljin

thats 2 awfully long days I would say..

They're biblical days...

Seriously though, I don't doubt that with the observations that you could determine the presence of a moon or not. Even if its moon is just a captured comet.

[Xelion]

Seeing it has a similar environment to Mars, it could have possibly had some life in the very distant past... why its on such an orbit is unusual.

[Xelion]

Originally posted by karajorma
Inuit Goddess.

As much as that is true I think Ocean Goddess would describe her better.