Help NASA to find planet nine!

[kunok]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-funded-website-lets-public-search-for-new-nearby-worlds

In a similar way to kepler data was given in planet hunters, this initiative (also in zooniverse) gives WISE images and ask amateurs to search for the planet nine, and also look for close brown dwarfs.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9

@ProtoJeb21 I know you like this things

Edited February 16, 2017 by kunok

[Spaceception]

@ProtoJeb21 Looks like you're being called to anything that involves new planets  

On topic, this is really cool, hope they find it this year!

[ProtoJeb21]

Like with the radial velocity data set, this is something I would like to take part of. However, my research of transiting exoplanet candidates means that I will have to wait until I can do this stuff. But it would be really cool if the public manages to find Planet 9 before Mike Brown does. Actually, it would really suck for him...

[_Augustus_]

A new brown dwarf/planet candidate has already been found.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9/talk/subjects/5464177

[ProtoJeb21]

6 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

A new brown dwarf/planet candidate has already been found.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9/talk/subjects/5464177

...........

That was fast!

[Spaceception]

25 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

A new brown dwarf/planet candidate has already been found.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9/talk/subjects/5464177

How far is it?

[_Augustus_]

7 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

How far is it?

No idea, for all we know it could be Planet 9. It's moved fast enough across the frame for that to be possible.

It's in the constellation of Hydra near the border with Cancer. In theory this is close enough to Planet 9's likely position for it to be possible (albeit unlikely).

Edited February 17, 2017 by _Augustus_

[YNM]

I don't think that's a real thing. Two earlier observations 6 months apart and then 3 year gap, then 6 months again, yet the object only appeared between the three-year gap (undetectable in either of the precluding or concluding image) and it only moved 0.02 deg at least in that time ?

TBH the problem with these "citizen science" thing is their lack of data clarity (apart from main data, such as date taken, exposure or anything). Even a proper software would've ruled out such thing.

Edited February 17, 2017 by YNM

[kunok]

8 hours ago, YNM said:

Even a proper software would've ruled out such thing.

That's the point, a proper software have already ruled out as false negatives lots of objects that are being searched. Of course amateurs will do a lot of false positives, but it's a good enough filter.

11 hours ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

I will have to wait until I can do this stuff

Remember that the first price is a single unique opportunity exoplanets are lots of them, planet nine is only one

[YNM]

5 hours ago, kunok said:

That's the point, a proper software have already ruled out as false negatives lots of objects that are being searched. Of course amateurs will do a lot of false positives, but it's a good enough filter.

Well, granted softwares have no wiggle room to allow unusual consequences (that being said, isn't Gaia slightly automated, in telling what's star and what isn't ?), but when your object is going to be barely brighter than the noise, you should really use another instrument, not making up data.

[kunok]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Well, granted softwares have no wiggle room to allow unusual consequences (that being said, isn't Gaia slightly automated, in telling what's star and what isn't ?), but when your object is going to be barely brighter than the noise, you should really use another instrument, not making up data.

Well Gaia data have 400 scientist and software engineers dedicated to developing a processing software  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Processing_and_Analysis_Consortium

I suppose that nobody is paying a so big team for the WISE data looking for brown dwarfs and the planet nine

[YNM]

... As well as the fact that WISE was not intended for this.

Still, I highly doubt they would fully nail it with WISE. JWST should be a better way to.

[munlander1]

The problem with looking for it is if there is not a 9th planet we will keep searching for it when there is nothing to be found.

[Nikolai]

14 hours ago, munlander1 said:

The problem with looking for it is if there is not a 9th planet we will keep searching for it when there is nothing to be found.

... or until we uncover enough data to rule it out.  (Note that the size and location of Planet Nine, if it exists, are already constrained by data.)

But even if we were to take this for granted, why would it necessarily be bad?  We learn a lot about other things while we're looking for one thing.

[magnemoe]

13 minutes ago, Nikolai said:

... or until we uncover enough data to rule it out.  (Note that the size and location of Planet Nine, if it exists, are already constrained by data.)

But even if we were to take this for granted, why would it necessarily be bad?  We learn a lot about other things while we're looking for one thing.

Yes, also that new dwarf planets outside Neptune might disprove planet 9. 
The planet 9 theory is based on the distribution of dwarf planets 

[Green Baron]

54 minutes ago, Nikolai said:

(Note that the size and location of Planet Nine, if it exists, are already constrained by data.)

Orbital parameters are constrained, not the position in that orbit. In order to server as a perturber of the observed bodies it must have a highly excentric orbit with an apoapsis opposite of the apoapsides of the observed bodies. But that means that it is a long time far away near the periapsis and only a short time in an observable range, which in turn makes it improbable to view accidentally.

Edit: visit the other thread on planet nine for more info and links :-)

2nd edit: Dwarf planet's orbits are not the only hint to planet nine. The tilt of the planets to the sun's axis can also be explained by a mass far out with a long lever.

 

Edited February 20, 2017 by Green Baron

[YNM]

15 hours ago, munlander1 said:

The problem with looking for it is if there is not a 9th planet we will keep searching for it when there is nothing to be found.

There will always be something to be found. Sedna-like bodies, for example. Yes it's not a planet, but they would solve the question that remains for outer solar system.

[Nikolai]

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Orbital parameters are constrained, not the position in that orbit.

Yes, I understand that; I was playing a bit loose with the term "location".  The idea is that if Planet Nine exists, it must have orbits within a certain range and a mass lower than a certain amount.  If further discoveries show that even those orbits cannot support a substantially massive Planet Nine, then we can reject the notion that there's something like that there.

[Spaceception]

What if we end up finding a smaller Mars-sized planet instead Like in the 1930s we thought something huge was messing with Neptune, and we found Pluto, turns out nothing was wrong with Neptune, and today, we think something's messing with the dwarf planets, and what if it turns out to be nothing, but we find a smaller planet instead.

I just think that would be a funny outcome, there's a Planet 9, but not one we expected.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Spaceception

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, Spaceception said:

What if we end up finding a smaller Mars-sized planet instead

I'm sure, you're too optimistic. The angular momentum distribution looks too pretty to allow something big to exist somewhere far.
As this thinked to me, when the proto-Sun got ignited it had snarled the gas-n-dust disc with its electromagnetic field and sun storms, making this to stick up into one-two huge hydrogen-helium balls and giving them all Solar System momentum, previously stored in the protostar body. So, JupSat pair accumulated most of this angular momentum and got thrown away from the Sun.
The other planets are just gobs of scrap from that feast of life, they are spread along the JupSat path as droplets of fat, under Titius-Bode distribution.

Edited February 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[kunok]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I'm sure, you're too optimistic. The angular momentum distribution looks too pretty to allow something big to exist somewhere far.
As this thinked to me, when the proto-Sun got ignited it had snarled the gas-n-dust disc with its electromagnetic field and sun storms, making this to stick up into one-two huge hydrogen-helium balls and giving them all Solar System momentum, previously stored in the protostar body. So, JupSat pair accumulated most of this angular momentum and got thrown away from the Sun.
The other planets are just gobs of scrap from that feast of life, they are spread along the JupSat path as droplets of fat, under Titius-Bode distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-planet_Nice_model#Notes_on_Planet_Nine There are models derived from the Nice model that could somewhat explain that planet

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, kunok said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-planet_Nice_model#Notes_on_Planet_Nine There are models derived from the Nice model that could somewhat explain that planet

I don't want to be rude, but when the so-called "Late Heavy Bombardment" is mentioned like an argument, this gets mostly a enterntainment speculation rather than a theory.
Big booms receive more likes.

Of course, I like big badabooms (otherwise hadn't played KSP!), but yet afaik the only visible thing which is used as an evidence of this event in the far past are the Moon craters.
Then they begin to tell fairy tales like "Of course, the Earth was cratered, too, but, alas!, the geological processes cleaned all craters out."
Sounds like "We have no evidence but undoubtedly it was, Your Honor. Just look at the ugly face of his roommate, they both are a gang."

The lunar seas could appear at the same time because the new-born Moon could, say, face the primary Earth satellites, while its orbit was rising, or something else.
And then that was all their "late heavy bombardment".

Then from this fictional event they evolve a whole bunch of theories like this.

Still afaik the only argument for both Oort cloud and Ninth planet existence are some similarities in the orbits of far bodies, which still could be caused by a star passing by. With no visible facts.
Let's not forget that the Solar System is 4.6 bln years old and it has appeared in a star cluster, so it had spent its early days in a bad district.
So, maybe 1 bln years ago the orbits were aligned in absolutely dufferent direction because some Gliese passed by in, say, 0.1 ly from the Sun or so.

[kunok]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Of course, I like big badabooms (otherwise hadn't played KSP!), but yet afaik the only visible thing which is used as an evidence of this event in the far past are the Moon craters.

No, mercury also have craters of the same age, and there is more info out there. But today I'm sleepy and lazy, so I won't search for you.