Tenth Planet?

[tom]

Greets all

>From the Vanlug President in Vancouver, B.C., Canada;


> Hi, all.
> 
> Those of you who are into both Linux and astronomy are likely very
> familiar with XEphem,
> 
>    http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/
> 
> Here's some data that's worth plugging into it:
> 
>    http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/mpec/K02/K02T34.html
> 
> It seems that Chad Trujillo and Mike Brown at CalTech have discovered
> what is in essence a tenth planet. Quaoar (pronounced kwah-o-wahr), as
> the discoverers are calling it, is about 1250 km in diameter (roughly
> the size of Pluto's moon Charon, and quite a bit larger than 1 Ceres,
> the largest minor planet). Nothing larger has been found in our solar
> system since Pluto was discovered in 1930. It's huge: If one took the
> 50,000 numbered asteroids and put them together, the result would be
> smaller than Quaoar.  It may be a KBO (Kuiper Belt Object), but some
> KBO!  It was discovered four months ago, but the news has been kept
> secret until very recently.  Prediscovery imagery dating back twenty
> years has been identified.  This thing could have been discovered a long
> time ago, had anyone been looking in the right place.
> 
> For details, see http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/quaoar/
> 
> Note that all information on this page is embargoed for another few
> hours (until 12:30PM CDT today).  Start looking for mention of this in
> newspapers, TV, and radio starting tonight.                
> 
> -- 
> Dave Michelson
> dmichelson at ieee.org
 

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