Publication Details

AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS

SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH

earth and planetary sciences

Discovery and Physical Characterization of a Large Scattered Disk Object at 92 au

Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 839, No. 1, Article L15, Year 2017

We report the observation and physical characterization of the possible dwarf planet 2014 UZ224 ("DeeDee"), a dynamically detached trans-Neptunian object discovered at 92 au. This object is currently the second-most distant known trans-Neptunian object with reported orbital elements, surpassed in distance only by the dwarf planet Eris. The object was discovered with an r-band magnitude of 23.0 in data collected by the Dark Energy Survey between 2014 and 2016. Its 1140 year orbit has . It will reach its perihelion distance of 38 au in the year 2142. Integrations of its orbit show it to be dynamically stable on Gyr timescales, with only weak interactions with Neptune. We have performed follow-up observations with ALMA, using 3 hr of on-source integration time to measure the object's thermal emission in the Rayleigh-Jeans tail. The signal is detected at 7σ significance, from which we determine a V-band albedo of percent and a diameter of , assuming a spherical body with uniform surface properties.

Statistics
Citations: 68
Authors: 68
Affiliations: 34
Identifiers
Research Areas
Environmental
Study Design
Cross Sectional Study
Cohort Study
Study Approach
Quantitative