Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Did we find Planet Nine in 1983?

No we haven't capital-F "Found" Planet Nine. But. Michael Rowan-Robinson of Imperial College (London) has an idea where to look: in the IRAS Point Source Catalog 1983. h/t the Turtle.

MRR is the real deal. He was one of the original "Planet X" skeptics, before Neptune's orbit was decisively fixed. In fact he was the d00d who compiled IRAS in the first place! So if he thinks he has found something, this should be taken seriously.

MRR's search is for such objects as move slower than Eris but not as slow as, say, Proxima Centauri. He finds nothing in PSCz nor RIIFSCz. His candidate is a triplet R20593+6413, R20592+6411, R20562+6408 in single hours-confirmed (1HCon) sources. Those would be in the Reject File of 1983, thankfully undeleted since.

If they be the same moving target then, surmiseth MMR, they should count as a triple confirmation.

This - if legit - would be a ∼3-5 ME planet at ∼210-240 AU ... at very high ecliptic latitude and at low Galactic latitude. So, in the middle of the Milky Way and not easily detectable from the 1980s; and off-zodiac so ignored by Moonbeam from Sedona. And by whoever in Flagstaff was out for that phantom Neptune-disturber, of which MRR at the time was one.

The manuscript is unpolished and any editor could suggest plenty of readability improvements. Against that, I suggest that the news cannot wait. The arxiv exists for a reason and among those reasons is to get followup research done A.S.A.F'n.P.

All I can say is... happy hunting.

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