Was there a new planet found (in the past 5 years)? What's it's name?

Answer 1

Planets in our solar system: six known since antiquity. Uranus discovered 1781. Neptune discovered 1846. Eight in all.

The first 4 asteroids discovered (1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno and 4 Vesta) were all regarded as planets from their discovery (1801-7) till the 1860s when that status was withdrawn from them. For a while we therefore we had 12 planets.

Pluto, discovered 1930, was regarded as a planet till 24th August 2006 when it too had that status withdrawn from it and was demoted to being a dwarf planet.

Dwarf planets in our solar system: three objects are now categorised this way: Pluto, the asteroid 1 Ceres (discovered 1801) and the object 2003 UB 313, temorarily nicknamed Xena which has now in recent days been given the permanent name Eris (after the Greek goddess of Strife and Discord) by the IAU (as has its moon Dysnomia, the daughter of Eris in the Greek myth).

Eris (diameter 2400±100 km) is a little bigger than Pluto (diameter 2306±20 km) and orbits to twice as far away at aphelion (97 AU as compared to Pluto's 49 AU). It is a Scattered Disk Object where Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object.

There are 12 more candidates for the status of dwarf planet; six of these have names (Sedna, Orcus, Ixion, Charon, Quaoar and Varuna) two have ninicknames (Easterbunny and Santa) and four just have year-and-number designations.

Sedna is perhaps the most interesting of these as its highly eccentric orbit extends to ten times as far from the sun as Eris does (975 AU at aphelion as compared to Eris' 97 AU). Sedna is variously regarded as an Inner Oort Cloud Object or an Extended Scattered Disk Object. It traverses both regions of the Solar System.

Small Solar System Bodies in our solar system: we now know of 1000 or more Trans-Neptunian objects, (80% of these in the Kuiper Belt) discovered since 1992 (that is about 70 a year). We now know of some 338,000 asteroids, and are discovering them at a rate of 5,000 a month, Some 13,000 of these have names. It is estimated there may be somewhere between 1.1 and 1.9 million such asteroids of more than 1 kilometre in diameter.

So the Solar System is now both "getting bigger" and "filling up"!

Extra-solar planets in other star systems: we now know of 200+ such planets orbiting 170+ stars and are finding them at the rate of about 20 a year. Two stars have 4 such planets, four have 3 and fourteen have 2.

The most recently discovered exoplanet is 450 light years away. The nearest is 10 light years away and the farthest is 21,500 light years away.

Asteroid and Kuiper Belts around other stars: in the last two years we have found a belt of such objects around the star Tau Ceti, 11 light years away (10 times as massive as our own asteroid belt) and around the star HD 69830 (25 times as massive as our own asteroid belt) which is 41 light years away, which also has 3 Neptune-sized planets in its habitable zone.

Answer 2

in 2003, astronomers found a body that recently proved to be about five percent bigger than pluto. they designated it 2003 UB313 until the international astronomical union could name it. the iau has given it the name eris. eris and pluto are not classified as planets however so the iau has also giver each a number: "134340 pluto" and "136199 eris".

this same thing happened in the mid 1800s. beginning in 1800, astronomers found a few bodies orbiting the sun between the orbits of mars and jupiter. they finally stopped calling them planets after the fourth discovery. they gave the first one discovered, "1 ceres", the number one. no one 150 years from now no one will think pluto is a planet, and very few will even know we called pluto a planet. this does not change anything about the solar system.

i have been waiting for this since i was about twelve. i feel somewhat satisfied. i knew that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt illogical and "out of place". this was the right thing to do, believe me. i don't understand why so many are having such a problem with this.

i don't know how long this will drag on tho. many planetary scientists are not satisfied that the definition is rigorous enough.

look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/136199_Eris

Answer 3

They've found a couple.

The biggest one, discovered in 2003, was temporarily called "2003 UB 313", and also, "Xena". It has now been officially named "Eris". It is about twice as large as Pluto, and about 9 times more massive.

There is also one that was discovered in 2005, still called "2005 FY9". It is also larger than Pluto: about 1.5x larger, and about 4 times more massive.

There is a smaller one, discovered in 2003, "2003 EL61". It is about the third of the mass of Pluto. It has a funny, oval shape.

There are probably many more like these out there.

But these dwarf planets are not that large: even Eris, the largest one, is merely 1.4x larger than our Moon (and 1.6x more massive). This also means it is 3x smaller, and 81x lighter, than Earth.

Hope this helps

Answer 4

Yes it was found.But the problem comes after last month convetion of astronomers they decided to reorganized the solar system meaning that new planet when under the category of dwarf planets along with Pluto, Ceros(asteroid) and some of the others asteroid that I don't remember their names now. The new planet name's is Xena.

Answer 5

there were several new planet like objects found. one of them was named xena (after xena warrior princess).

An international group of astronomers got together and discussed the definition of planet.

They finally decided on a new definition, and pluto is no longer incuded as an official planet - it is now called a "dwarf planet." The other new objects would also be "dwarf planets," and would not fit in the new technical definition of a full planet.

Answer 6

Astronomers have discovered an object in our solar system that is larger than Pluto. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested. The new object, temporarily named 2003 UB313, is about three times as far from the Sun as is Pluto. The estimate is that it is 2,100 miles wide, about 1-1/2 times the diameter of Pluto.

Answer 7

There have been like 100 planets found in the last five years. Just not in our solar system.

They have mostly catalog names (some have nicknames like Osirus).

You can google/yahoo/wiki "Extrasolar Planets" or "Exoplanets"

Answer 8

Astronomers recently discovered this large planet composed of primarily hydrogen and helium. There have been close to 200 plantes discovered outside of our solar system. Hope this article helps. It's named HAT-P-1.

Answer 9

They keep changing the rules about what is a planet and what isn't
so the answer this week is no.

Answer 10

Ummm. yes