ANOTHER PLANET DISCOVERED
It takes 700 years to orbit the sun. It’s beyond even Pluto, but still within our solar system. Astronomers observing the solar system through the Canada-France Hawaii telescope saw the planet and were able to discern certain distinguishing characteristics. The world, dubbed Planet RR245, is an icy dwarf, just over 400 miles wide, 5% of the Earth’s width. Planet RR245 lies in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of celestial bodies just beyond Neptune that orbits the sun. It is believed that there is a staggering number of dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, but only 5 have been observed to the level that astronomers can say that they are, without a doubt, dwarf planets. Despite their initial observations, researchers cannot accurately ascertain the size of RR245. As part of the Outer Solar System Origins survey, they hope to discover more about the newly discovered dwarf planet.