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For a period of time, the object became known to the wider public as Xena. "Xena" was an informal name used internally by the discovery team, inspired by the title character of the television series Xena: Warrior Princess. The discovery team had reportedly saved the nickname "Xena" for the first body they discovered that was larger than Pluto.
Astronomer Michael E. Brown nicknamed his newly discovered dwarf planet "Xena" in 2003, [58] its then-provisional designation being 2003 UB 313. [58] When this object was initially determined to be larger than Pluto, it gained international attention and forced a year-long debate among astronomers as to the definition of a planet.
In January 2016, Brown and fellow Caltech astronomer, Konstantin Batygin, proposed the existence of Planet Nine, a major planet between the size of Earth and Neptune. [11] The two astronomers gave a recorded interview in which they described their method and reasoning for proposing Planet 9 on January 20, 2016.
Sighting of new ‘protoplanet’ could give insights into how planets in our own solar system formed
Dysnomia (formally (136199) Eris I Dysnomia) is the only known moon of the dwarf planet Eris and is the second-largest known moon of a dwarf planet, after Pluto I Charon.It was discovered in September 2005 by Mike Brown and the Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (LGSAO) team at the W. M. Keck Observatory.
Astronomers have discovered what they believe is the biggest known batch of planet-making ingredients swirling around a young star. The diameter of this colossal disk is roughly 3,300 times the ...
But the discovery of a planet at least 13 times Earth's mass orbiting very close to a red dwarf only 11% of the sun's mass has astronomers going back to the drawing board on planetary formation ...
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt [1] and over 10,000 in the region beyond. [2] However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among ...