It is estimated that planet number nine would be much larger than the Earth, the estimates so far would be that it would have between two to four times the radius of the Earth and about 10 times the mass of our planet, it would be larger, but it would be smaller than Uranus and Neptune, Uranus has about 14.5 times the mass of the Earth, that is what they have calculated so far.
Because the candidate discovered now, if confirmed, would be a little older, because a team led by astronomer Terry Long Phan from the National University of Sin Juan in Taiwan has discovered by investigating the archives of two studies, studies that analyze the entire sky in far infrared, a possible candidate for planet number nine.
The data was taken from the Iras infrared astronomy satellite that was launched in 1983 and observed the universe for almost a year, before subsequently ceasing to function more than 20 years later in 2006, the Japanese Space Agency sent another satellite, the Akari, also an infrared astronomy satellite. This detail is important because although that planet is far away and although it cannot reflect light because for it all the stars, even the sun, would seem like just another little star in its sky, it would be a night. perpetual.
Despite all this, being a planet it will always be a little hotter than the space where it is located, any object, moon, planet or asteroid is always a little hotter than the “empty” space that surrounds it and infrared light is what allows us to see the heat of bodies in our day to day life, I suppose you have seen some thermal image, this application taken to space allows us to discover objects that emit a little more heat compared to the bottom of the void of the cosmos and that strategy is the important thing because it allows detecting residual heat.
What the researchers did was the data package from the 1980s from that satellite and the data package from 20 years after the satellite that was active between 2006 and 2011, almost 25 years later, and their strategy was to look for objects that had moved with respect to the original data, those from more than 20 previous years. To begin with, if they did not move they were stars, it is ruled out, if the movement was large, then they were also ruled out because they were surely comets or asteroids. Although no asteroids had been discovered, they could be unknown asteroids, but asteroids that were much closer to us within the region of planets, that move much faster.
The researchers calculated that planet number nine and at the distance it should be had to show a certain movement, a displacement between one and another certain image, that was the working strategy was a movement of 3 minutes of arc for a distance of approximately 700 astronomical units, they also calculated other types of movements such as that of our planet that could influence, they are movements that are called parallax, with all that they calculated what was the movement they were looking for, the object they had to look for with that certain movement and they found one, it is a candidate that must be confirm it.
At the moment it is something, but if it is confirmed it would be larger than Neptune and it would be about 700 times further from the Sun than the Earth, it is an enormous distance for you to have a reference. The spacecraft that has traveled the furthest is Voyager 1 and it is only 160 astronomical units, one astronomical unit is the distance that separates the Earth from the Sun.
A reasonable amount of time could be spent to confirm that we have the James Webb but also soon we will have the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope operating, which is not that it is more powerful than the James Webb but it has other different functions that make it complementary to the James Webb.
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