Scientists online crowdsource search for Planet 9!

[Missourian]

That's right folks...you too are invited to pour over images of the heavens in search of elusive Planet 9...

Scientists working with a number of institutions have created a website filled with data that will allow people to hunt for previously undiscovered objects circling the sun from beyond Neptune's orbit.

The website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, asks people to look through flipbooks of images to try to find "failed stars," known as brown dwarfs, or even the elusive "Planet 9" — a theoretical planet thought to circle the sun from the reaches of the solar system.

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 should help add to the automated searches for these objects already underway.

Scientists need your help to find the mysterious planet they suspect is lurking in our solar system
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Good luck...and be sure to have an awesome planetary moniker ready in the event you hit the scientific jackpot...

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[sealybobo]

That's right folks...you too are invited to pour over images of the heavens in search of elusive Planet 9...

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Scientists working with a number of institutions have created a website filled with data that will allow people to hunt for previously undiscovered objects circling the sun from beyond Neptune's orbit.​

​

The website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, asks people to look through flipbooks of images to try to find "failed stars," known as brown dwarfs, or even the elusive "Planet 9" — a theoretical planet thought to circle the sun from the reaches of the solar system.​

​

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 should help add to the automated searches for these objects already underway.​

​

​

​

Scientists need your help to find the mysterious planet they suspect is lurking in our solar system​

​

Good luck...and be sure to have an awesome planetary moniker ready in the event you hit the scientific jackpot...

​

​

​

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It's so far out we can't see it even though it's 10 x the size of earth. It's beyond the Kuiper Belt or in it. So far out, so dark, we can't see it. It takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the sun. How many years does it take Planet 9 if it's beyond the Kuiper belt?

This speculative "Planet 9," according to estimates, would be about 5-10 Earth-masses in size and orbit about 400-800 au from the Sun. A planet at this distance would be extremely difficult to spot in normal optical sky searches because of its faintness, even to telescopes like PanSTARRS and LSST.


Does that mean up to 800 years to orbit the sun?