New data about two distant asteroids give a clue to the possible “Planet Nine”

17/02/2017
A team of researchers, led by the Severo Ochoa advance postdoctoral fellow of the IAC Julia de León and in collaboration with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, has taken a step further to physically characterize two distant asteroids (trans Neptunian objects) and to confirm or refute the "Planet Nine" hypothesis. The study, which includes the first spectroscopic observations of 2004 VN112 and 2013 RF98 with the GTC, proposes that this pair of objects was a binary asteroid that shut down after approaching a planet beyond Pluto. The study has recently been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. >> Read more