A new dwarf planet candidate has been discovered beyond Pluto

The solar system contains eight planets, but there are also several dwarf planets beyond Neptune's orbit. But while the famous Planet Nine remains hypothetical, astronomers have recently discovered a new dwarf planet candidate orbiting beyond Pluto.

Named 2026 ED138, this celestial object was discovered using the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The discovery was announced yesterday, but it was first identified on October 13 by Matthew Holman, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Using code developed in collaboration with Kevin Napier to analyze billions of detections of moving objects, he noticed that one of the objects was unusually large.

Then, the team analyzed the results using observations made with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory as well as data from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) dating back to 2016. Thus, according to their findings, 2026 ED138 is located about 46 astronomical units from the Sun, while Pluto is, on average, 40 AU away. Its diameter is estimated to be between 600 and 1,500 km (between 370 and 930 miles). However, these are only estimates, and they may still change.

Finally, this dwarf planet candidate was likely discovered only recently because it is located in a densely populated region of the sky. As a result, it was difficult to distinguish this object from the stars.