POTENTIAL DWARF PLANET DISCOVERED AT SOLAR SYSTEM'S EDGE

In a quiet observatory nestled in the Chilean desert, a telescope's lens captures a faint speck of light moving against the starry void, revealing a hidden world at the solar system's farthest reaches. Last week, astronomers announced the discovery of a potential dwarf planet, a distant object roughly 435 miles wide, orbiting the sun far beyond Neptune. Located approximately 90 times farther from the sun than Earth, this icy body offers a rare glimpse into the outer fringes of our cosmic neighborhood.

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Detected through years of meticulous observation, the object's slow journey across the sky required powerful telescopes in Chile and Hawaii to confirm its existence. Its size, slightly smaller than the smallest known dwarf planet, Ceres, places it among a select group of celestial bodies, yet its formal classification awaits further study.

ASTRONOMERS' QUEST FOR A DISTANT WORLD

High in the Andes, the Victor M. Blanco Telescope scans the night sky, its mirrors gathering light from objects too faint for the human eye. Over seven years, a team led by Sihao Cheng at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, pored over images from this telescope, alongside data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Their goal was to spot objects moving against the fixed backdrop of stars, a sign of something orbiting the sun far beyond the known planets.

The team, including Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang from Princeton University, identified the potential dwarf planet in 19 archival images, tracking its gradual shift across the sky. The object's faintness, due to its immense distance, required multiple observations to confirm it wasn't a fleeting asteroid or distant star. Cheng's team, driven by a passion for uncovering the solar system's hidden residents, spent countless hours analyzing these images, piecing together the object's path with mathematical precision.