Search for Planet Nine leads astronomers to finding new planet

In search for Planet Nine, astronomers came across an icy distant dwarf planet in our solar system that has been named as ‘The Goblin’.

While hunting for the massive Planet Nine suspected to be in orbit far beyond Pluto, astronomers came across The Goblin, an icy planet seemingly under the gravitational influence of a huge unseen object that is out there.

As per The Guardian, the newly discovered icy planet is approximately 300km across is in a really elongated orbit. The Goblin sits around two and a half time as far from the sun as Pluto does, even at its closet. In our solar system, the planet is 60 times further out than Pluto, taking around 40,000 years to orbit once around the sun, with 99% of its orbit too faint to be seen.

Astronomers claim ninth planet exists, but is invisible

“We are only just now uncovering what the very outer solar system might look like and what might be out there. We believe there are thousands of dwarf planets in the distant solar system. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now,” said Scott Sheppard, a member of the team.

Officially known as 2015 TG38, the planet got its nickname ‘The Goblin’ because of its discovery around Halloween. It is the third minor dwarf planet to have been discovered after the discoveries of Sedna and another object called 2012 VP113.

As per the astronomers, the discovery of this dwarf planet makes the existence of Planet Nine more likely, reported Popular Mechanics.