In the Solar system found a new planet
Astronomers have found that previously discovered in the Solar system object DeeDee is a spherical dwarf planet. This was reported on the website Phys.org.
DeeDee was discovered in the fall of 2016 with 4-meter Blanco telescope, which is located in the inter-American Observatory Cerro-Tololo in Chile. This tool carried out observations in the framework of the project Dark Energy Survey, whose goal is the study of dark energy. At the same time managed to capture 12 percent of the sky that allows you to search different objects. So, it was revealed that about 1.1 billion celestial bodies, most of which were galaxies.
The Blanco telescope allowed us to calculate the distance and characteristics of the orbit DeeDee, which is three times farther from the Sun than Pluto. However, astronomers were unable to calculate its dimensions and to determine other physical characteristics. For that purpose the researchers used ALMA — Atkarskoy large grill in the millimetre range. This radio telescope composed of 66 antennas, allows you to record thermal radiation from celestial objects.
It turned out that the diameter DeeDee reaches up to 635 kilometers, which is a third less than that of Ceres, the nearest to the Sun dwarf planet. According to researchers, at this size the object must have sufficient mass to have a spherical shape. In this case, he is also a dwarf planet. The surface temperature Up to 30 K or -243 degrees Celsius. The object reflects only 13 percent of incident light.