Planet 9 and Mike Brown

 Mike Brown pointing at the expected zone of Planet Nine's orbit

From Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin's blog The Search for Planet Nine

Nasa recently posted this vision of travel to Europa, Jupiter's Moon.

The Search for Planet Nine

 Abstract: We use an extensive suite of numerical simulations to constrain the mass and orbit of Planet Nine, the recently proposed perturber in a distant eccentric orbit in the outer solar system. We  compare our simulations to the observed population of aligned eccentric high semimajor axis Kuiper belt objects and determine which simulation parameters are statistically compatible with the observations. We find that only a narrow range of orbital elements can reproduce the observations. In particular, the combination of semimajor axis, eccentricity, and mass of Planet Nine strongly dictates the semimajor axis range of the orbital confinement of the distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects. Allowed orbits, which confine Kuiper belt objects with semimajor axis beyond 230 AU, have perihelia roughly between 200 and 350 AU, semimajor axes between 300 and 900 AU, and masses of approximately 10 Earth masses. Orbitally confined objects also generally have orbital planes similar to that of the planet, suggesting that the planet is inclined approximately 30 degrees to the ecliptic. We compare the allowed orbital positions and estimated brightness of Planet Nine to previous and ongoing surveys which would be sensitive to the planet's detection and use these surveys to rule out approximately two-thirds of the planet's orbit. Planet Nine is likely near aphelion with an approximate brightness of 22<V<25.  At opposition, its motion, mainly due to parallax, can easily be detected within 24 hours. http://www.findplanetnine.com/ 

 

The predicted planet would be a super-Earth, with an estimated mass of about 10 times that of Earth (approximately 5,000 times the mass of Pluto), a diameter two to four times that of Earth, and a highly elliptical orbit that is so far away that it could take around 15,000 years to orbit the Sun. Wikipedia

Quality of the Moment?

"Now I need to remember my Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimi, Legolas, Merry & Pippin voices from 3 months ago for Return of the King. Dad work is tough"

Mike Brown is reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to his daughter

Planet 9: Astronomer Mike Brown's daughter told him to find new planet after he 'killed off Pluto'

'She said ‘Daddy, what you need to do is go find a new planet so that people will no longer be sad about Pluto’' 

 

Early on 20 January, Mike Brown put on his special “planet socks” decorated with famous members of the Solar System and went to work. Later that night the astronomer came home to his front door with a celebratory message pinned on it from his ten-year-old daughter Lilah: “Congratulations Daddy! The 9^th Planet, AKA The Lilah Planet.”

 

Recent confirmatory Finding

 

 

uo3L91 is an object of the Kuiper Belt (KBO) discovered by Michael E. Brown March 24, 2016. According to its discoverer, it is an additional proof of the existence of the planet Nine because its position is consistent with the disruption models KBO induced by the planet Nine . (46au-1300au approx)

Timeline Changes-Atlantis-and much more....