what are the two new planets discovered in our solar system?

Answer 1

our solar system actually got smaller recently. There is now only 8 planets, cuz pluto is now considered a dwarf planet along with ceres and iris.

Answer 2

Other than Xena, there is Ceres. Now that Pluto has been demoted, you should put Charon in the new dwarf planet category too. None of these are new--they have been reclassified recently.

I don't think a new one has been discovered recently. I'll check the news. There have been some extrasolar planet discoveries though.

Answer 3

An international team of astronomers have turned up two new Jupiter-sized planets orbiting distant stars. These planets are incredibly close to their parent stars; just a fraction of the distance from Mercury to the Sun. Astronomers believe these planets are being eroded by the intense radiation of their stars. The discovery was made using the new SuperWASP program, which looks for stars that dim and brighten on a regular schedule as a planet passes in front of them.

Answer 4

Eris and Ceres they are dwarf planets along with pluto who got demoted to a dwarf by Snow White because Grumpy quit

Answer 5

i think SEDNA is part of the two.
it is a planet bigger than pluto which is now considered as a dwarf planet.

Answer 6

Al and Capone.

Answer 7

sedna and the other(ihave no idea)

Answer 8

umm isit Sedna?

Answer 9

(m)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA-- September 24, 1998 -- Deploying the massive Keck telescope in Hawaii in a new planet search, a team of astronomers has detected two planets orbiting Sun-like stars, bringing to 12 the number of distant worlds discovered beyond our solar system.

One of the new discoveries, a Jupiter-sized sphere that most likely appears deep blue-violet, barely skims the outer reaches of its yellow star, passing 25 times closer to the star than the Earthís orbit of the Sun, and nine time closer than Mercuryís path around the Sun. Its close orbit allows it to circle its star about every three days. In contrast, the other new planet has a more Earth-like orbit. Its average distance from its star is nearly the same as the Earth-Sun distance, the first planet discovered with such a familiar distance. A year on this planet is 437 days.

"We had discovered planets that orbit much closer and much farther from their stars than the Earth-Sun distance," said Geoffrey Marcy, University Distinguished Professor of Science at San Francisco State University who, along with Paul Butler of the Anglo-Australian Observatory, has discovered nine of the dozen planets so far detected.

"We wondered if nature rarely puts planets at one Earth-Sun distance," Marcy continued. "Now we know that such planets are not rare." Marcy also holds a post as adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley.

A report on the planet with the small orbit (around star HD187123) has been accepted by Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The paper on the planet with the more Earth-like orbit (around star HD210277) will be submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-authors with Marcy and Butler on both papers, and colleagues in the SF State-based discovery team, are Steve Vogt, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who developed the spectrometer needed for planet detection; Debra Fischer, post-doctoral researcher with Marcy at SF State; and Kevin Apps, an undergraduate at the University of Sussex.

Apps, a sophomore in physics and astrophysics at Sussex and an amateur astronomer since the age of seven, is intensely interested in the likelihood of planets around Sun-like stars. In 1997, he e-mailed Marcy and Butler, asking if he could see their list of candidate stars in the new planet search they were launching at the Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, the worldís largest telescope for optical and infrared astronomy. Upon analyzing the starsí temperature, luminosity, composition and other features using new satellite data available on the Internet, Apps discovered that 30 of the stars were actually not good candidates, and he offered to supply a list of 30 "solar ringers," as he calls them, in their place.

To his surprise, Marcy and Butler agreed to substitute 30 candidate stars with Appsí 30 solar ringers. One of the newly discovered planets orbits a staróHD187123ófrom Appsí list.

"I donít think I can put into words how I feel about Geoff and Paul finding a planet around one of my suggested targets," says Apps.

Marcy is quite impressed with the young amateur. "He used the latest satellite data, sifted out the stars that would have the best likelihood of harboring planets. He shows a fierce interest in this research. Itís great to have him as a colleague."

The two discoveries are among 430 candidates in the new planet search using the Keck Observatory. The observations were made over 12 nights during the last nine months, under the auspices of NASA and the University of California.

Marcy expects to discover "something like" two dozen Jupiter-sized planets orbiting stars within one Earth-Sun distance. "That should happen within the next three years if the law of averages applies," he says.

But a second goal of the planet search is to discover Jupiters much farther out from their starsó"like five Earth-Sun distances: the signposts of solar systems like ours," Marcy adds. "Make no mistake about it," he says. "What weíre all about is discovering (planets) where evolution might have gotten a toehold. Jupiter-sized planets at a greaterdistance from their star would suggest a solar system that could host a rocky Earth-like planet. And if it should turn out that out of more than 400 stars, none has a Jupiter orbiting at five Earth-Sun distances, that would be a frightening reality. It might be the first sign that Earth is truly unusual and so life may be rare."

The planets were discovered by detecting a characteristic wobble in the motion of the star, a wobble caused by the gravitational effect of the planet orbiting the star. The detection was made using the HIRES spectrometer built by Steven Vogt and deployed on the Keck telescope.

HD 187123, the star with the close orbiting planet, is a near twin of the Sun. This star is 154 light years (48 parsecs) away in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan). The star has the same size, mass, temperature and luminosity as the Sun, but is richer in heavy elements such as iron. Almost all planets found to date orbit stars that are at least as rich in heavy elements as the Sun. This trend toward heavy elements, Marcy says, may be a clue about how planets form.

The planet is closer to its host star than any planet found before. It orbits only 0.042 AU away from its sun. (An AU is the Earth-Sun distance). Indeed, it orbits only four stellar diameters from the surface of the star HD187123. Its period is 3.097 days.

HD210277, the star with the planet that has the Earth-like orbit,is slightly bigger than the Sun. It is 68 (21 parsecs) away, in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. The planet has an average orbital distance barely greater (15 percent) than that of the Earthís. Until now, the extrasolar planet that had been closest to an orbit the size of Earthís was 16 Cygni B, with an average distance 70 percent greater than Earthís. The planet is about the size of Jupiter.