What is the nine planets?

The Nine Planets is an encyclopedic overview with facts and information about mythology and current scientific knowledge of the planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system and beyond. The smallest and fastest planet, Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and whips around it every 88 Earth days.

What if Planet Nine exists?

If Planet Nine does exist, it’s probably a very cold gas giant like Neptune, rather than a rocky planet like Earth. It would be smaller, however: Neptune is more than 17 times the mass of Earth.

Does planet Nine have a name?

Planet Nine does not have an official name and will not receive one unless its existence is confirmed via imaging. Only two planets, Uranus and Neptune, have been discovered in the Solar System during recorded history. [ 185 ] However, many minor planets, including dwarf planets such as Pluto, asteroids, and comets have been discovered and named.

Is planet Nine a rogue planet?

Planet Nine's unusual orbit and extreme distance from the sun also raise the possibility that it could be a rogue planet — an interstellar world that was captured by the sun after being ejected from its star system. However, Brown and Batygin believe Planet Nine likely formed alongside the other planets in the solar system.

Could astronomers find Planet Nine?

The observatory may even find the hypothetical Planet Nine, a large world that some astronomers believe is hiding at the solar system’s peripheries. “Probably within the first year we’re going to see if there’s something there or not,” says Pedro Bernardinelli, an astronomer at the University of Washington.

Is planet Nine a dwarf planet?

Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”