Most-Distant Body Ever Observed in Our Solar System

Astronomers on 17^th December, 2018 said that they had now discovered an object that is the most distant thing ever observed in our solar system and due to its distance it’s nick named as “Farout” as it's so far away from the solar system. This object will be formally called as 2018 VG18, the object is observed with a distance of more than 100 astronomical units from sun which is the first ever distant place found.

One AU is calculated as about 93 million miles or the distance from sun to earth.  Farout is near about 11 billion miles or about 120 A U in all from sun. It will take you about more than 21,000 years to reach Farout if you could drive there at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour. Scott Sheppard who is an astronomer at Carnegie Institution of Science at Washington, D.C., and a part of the team of astronomers who discovered the object, illustrated NBC News that when they first saw an object nicknamed Farout and its movement was very slow and they instantly knew that it is a special object which may be very distant. When we talk about speed it is known to be relative. According to Sheppard, Earth rotates around the sun at about 19 miles per second. Farout is calculated to move at speed of about 1 mile per second. Thus Farout is expected to take more than 1,000 years as per earth year to complete a single revolution at the orbit of sun. Pluto was considered a dwarf planet since 2006, is near about a distance of almost 34 AU. Thus Pluto takes about 248 years for one orbit to be completed of the sun. Farout is accessed to be a spherical rough object which may be approx. 300 miles in the diameter. Its pink color suggests that it is an icy planet, but not much is yet known about the object. Sheppard and his team members, Chad Trujillo of the Northern Arizona University and David Tholen of University of Hawaii, first found photos taken November 2018 of Farout with the help of Subaru Telescope at the Big Island of Hawaii. The discovery was thereafter confirmed in December when further more information was gathered by taking the help of an observatory telescope in Chile to put some light on the new discovery and reveal about the icy land discovered.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/most-distant-solar-system-object-ever-discovered-5500308/