asteroids<\/a> and much smaller TNOs. According to Holman, there might be “a handful” more objects the size of ED138, and Rubin should eventually find those, too.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bbdcc989-9955-4fc8-bcc5-2459a9559bd9.jpg\")
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NSF\u2013DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory\/NOIRLab\/SLAC\/AURA<\/p>\n
The orbital path of a newly discovered dwarf planet candidate, ED138, observed by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Rubin Observatory is just doing its job really well, inventorying the Solar System to new depths,” said Megan Schwamb, a reader in astrophysics at Queen\u2019s University Belfast and a member of the Rubin Solar System Operations team, in an email.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised that it found such an object so early in the commissioning observations. This was not on my bingo card for this year,” Schwamb added. “It shows how Rubin\u2019s combination of speed, depth, and sky coverage is going to transform our view of the Solar System over the next decade and especially in the next few years.”<\/p>\n
‘Think of it as a world’<\/p>\n
In 2006, the IAU adopted a new definition of a planet, describing it as an object that orbits the sun, is mostly round, and is big enough that it has cleared its orbit of objects of similar size. Scientists made the controversial decision to demote Pluto because it didn\u2019t satisfy the last requirement, and our solar system went from nine to eight planets.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Pluto and its ilk became known as dwarf planets \u2014 nearly round objects that orbit the sun but aren\u2019t large enough to have cleared their own orbits of debris.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/fb05132c-3870-4a22-aea2-969bf1991a00.jpg\")
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NASA<\/p>\n
Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager aboard NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles from the surface.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If ED138 is confirmed as a new dwarf planet, astronomers will first give it a permanent number and then an actual name, although the process could take time, and the details of who exactly will get to choose the name are still unclear.<\/p>\n
“People have already emailed me some suggestions, and some of them are already taken by other objects,” Holman said. “I don\u2019t know. It\u2019ll be fun. Maybe I\u2019ll get to suggest something, but I\u2019m not going to hold my breath, because this is a big, big project.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/c11ca515-d0c0-4890-89de-5542345e88c1.jpg\")
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VISUAL CAPITALIST\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY<\/p>\n
Illustration depicting the solar system\u2019s five dwarf planets and a few smaller natural satellites.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The finding is significant for the field, said Michele Bannister, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, who was not involved with the discovery of ED138.<\/p>\n
The object is “scientifically really cool because it\u2019s a trans-Neptunian object and it\u2019s also physically quite large, but still a lot fainter than you can see with the naked eye,” said Bannister, who studies the small worlds of the solar system.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d69c87e3-d4ff-4979-8874-78f6f85f9892.jpg\")
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NSF\u2013DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory\/NOIRLab\/SLAC\/AURA<\/p>\n
A mosaic of images captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory of the newly discovered dwarf planet candidate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The size of the object is just within the range where we can start to think of it as a world, she added, and other telescopes will now pick up the baton to find out more about it.<\/p>\n
“Maybe if we ever fly a spacecraft there, we\u2019ll find it has a nitrogen glacier like Pluto,” Bannister said. “That would be great to see. But at the moment, all we know is that it\u2019s big, and the rest is going to be speculation for a little bit, about what its physical characteristics really are.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have spotted a new dwarf planet candidate in the solar system, beyond the orbit of Pluto, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30008,908,2928,45857,5434,283095,38542,61,60,283097,200623,283099,29983,30146,223412,10505,283098,14746,82,2717,3630,247,7305,283096,200827,29213,386],"class_list":["post-668369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-astronomer","tag-astronomy","tag-discovery","tag-distance","tag-dwarf-planet","tag-ed138","tag-harvard-university","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-matthew-holman","tag-mmnd","tag-new-dwarf-planet-candidate","tag-object","tag-orbit","tag-pathway","tag-pluto","tag-possible-dwarf-planet","tag-rubin","tag-science","tag-scientist","tag-solar-system","tag-space","tag-sun","tag-tnos","tag-trans-neptunian-objects","tag-vera-c-rubin-observatory","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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