Andras Kovacs: Prospects for finding Planet 9 in DES data

Wednesday 1 Jun 2016, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Madrid

Seminar (IFAE)

Jelena Aleksic (IFAE), Joern Lange (IFAE Barcelona), John E Ward (IFAE)

Orbital alignments of six trans-Neptunian objects indicate that there might be a massive planet way out beyond the orbit of Pluto, about 200 times further than the distance from the sun to the Earth. This planet would be Neptune-sized, roughly 10 times more massive than Earth. But why haven't astronomers actually observed it yet? Based on new calculations, this planet should be bright enough to be visible in mid-range observatories, and definitely within the capabilities of the world's largest telescopes, like Keck, Palomar, Gemini, and Hubble, of course. In this talk I will summarize the existing constraints on the current location of "Planet 9" and briefly introduce the associated observational program in the Dark Energy Survey.