A pink world found in Solar System ledges

After long observations, the astronomers have discovered a new object at the edge of the Solar System, within 12 billion kilometers, or about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance. The object is the second dwarf planet discovered orbiting the Sun from a long distance, more distant dwarf planet Pluto. 

The dwarf planet Sedna, the only other object known in the region of the newly discovered dwarf planet 2012 VP113, is seen in this illustration released by NASA on Wednesday. (Picture from: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/)

Until before this discovery, the only dwarf planet farther than Pluto is Sedna, discovered in 2003. David Rabinowitz, of Yale University astronomer who discovered Sedna, said, "The recent discovery of this time show that Sedna is not an oddity."

"We can now have the confidence that there is a population (dwarf planet) which are ready to be explored," he added. Newly discovered dwarf planet named 2012 VP113. Another name of this dwarf planet was VP or Biden, taken from the name of vice president of the United States, Joe Biden.

Biden was discovered by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. Both discovered the dwarf planets through observations using telescopes at the European Southern Observatory facility,in Chile. 

Biden with a diameter of 450 kilometers, half of Sedna, a world that is very cool. The temperature reached -257 degrees celsius. Not like Sedna red, pink Biden, making it more difficult to detect and study. 

Biden was in a region called the Oort Cloud, precisely on the inside. The Oort cloud is a region that is the edge of the Solar System comet warehouse. Is Biden Unique? Sheppard and Trujillo said no. According to them, a kind of object Biden may be common in the Oort Cloud.

Biden has eccentric objects. Its closest distance to the sun can be 12 billion km, while the greatest distance reached 67.2 billion kilometers. Sedna itself has the closest distance of 11.4 billion kilometers and a maximum range of up to 132.4 billion kilometers.

Trujillo said, "Biden suggests that there is something we do not know about our solar system, and it's something important." As quoted from Nature, on Wednesday, Trujillo said, "Now we can begin to figure out what is out of bounds." *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | AP]
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