The most famous object in the solar system has now been confirmed. FarFarOut, a large clump of rock found in 2018 at an enormous distance of about 132 astronomical units from the sun, has been studied and characterized, and we now know much more about it and its orbit.
It is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) wide, at the bottom of the dwarf planet’s scale, and initial observations indicate that it has an average orbital distance of 101 astronomical units – that is 101 times the distance between the earth and the sun.
Since Pluto has an average orbital distance of about 39 astronomical units, FarFarOut is indeed very good. The provisional designation 2018 AG has been given37, and its proper name, in accordance with International Astronomical Union guidelines, is not yet available.
However, the orbit is not an even circle around the sun, but a really skewed oval. After careful observation, scientists calculated the orbit; FarFarOut swings as far as 175 astronomical units, and comes within 27 astronomical units within the orbit of Neptune.
(Roberto Molar Candanosa, Scott S. Sheppard / CIS, and Brooks Bays / UH)
This means that the object can help us to better understand the planets of the outer solar system.
“FarFarOut was probably thrown into the outer solar system by getting too close to Neptune in the distant past,” said astronomer Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University. “FarFarOut is likely to interact with Neptune again in the future, as their orbits are still crossing.”
The nickname of the object evolved from the discovery of an earlier object in the distance.
Artist’s impression of FarFarOut. (NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. Da Silva)
The dwarf planet Farout has an average orbital distance of 124 astronomical units and is named after a call made by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science. When he and his team discovered an even further object, the progress was clear.
However, FarFarOut is still very mysterious. Because it is so far away, it is extremely faint and has only been observed nine times in the course of two years. The team deduced its size based on its brightness, but we do not know much else; it may be a very large irregular object of the Kuiper Belt, or it may meet the criteria to be classified as a dwarf planet.
Discovery images from FarFarOut obtained in July 2018. (Scott S. Sheppard / Carnegie Institution for Science)
The astronomers are also not entirely sure of the winning time. They think it may be only 800 years shy (Pluto’s is 248), but there is enough winding space to take more than twice that time, or possibly move at a much faster pace.
So many more observations will have to be made to better understand it.
“FarFarOut takes a millennium to pass through the sun once,” said astronomer David Tholen of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. “As a result, it moves very slowly across the sky, requiring several years of observation to accurately determine its trajectory.”
Sheppard, Tholen and Trujillo are working on the study of the outer solar system in hopes of gaining a glimpse of Planet Nine, a hypothetical object thought to be responsible for the strange movement of clusters of objects in the outer regions beyond Pluto. .
There are other explanations for these orbits, but the work holds an excellent fringe benefit. The team discovered a number of objects we did not know about. There is of course Farout and FarFarOut. There is also a dwarf planet nicknamed The Goblin, which was discovered at a distance of 80 astronomical units.
There is even an object named 2014 FE72, whose orbit extends beyond 3,000 astronomical units, the only known object of its kind with an orbit completely outside Neptune. (It is currently much closer after the close approach to the sun in 1965.)
It is also not just the outer solar system. The researchers discovered 12 previously unknown moons in orbit around Jupiter and 20 moons orbiting Saturn.
So if there’s a Planet Nine out there, it’s probably the people who’ll find it. But in the process, they reveal a lot about the outer solar system.
“The discovery of FarFarOut shows our increasing ability to map the outer solar system and observe it further and further to the edge of our solar system,” Sheppard said.
“Only with the advancement in the last few years of large digital cameras on very large telescopes has it been possible to detect very distant objects such as FarFarOut effectively. Although some of these distant objects are quite large – the size of dwarf planets – they are very faint because of their extreme distance from the sun. FarFarOut is just the tip of the iceberg of objects in the very distant Solar System. ‘