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	• Science Desk >> ATW -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sedna We all know that in our solar system Pluto is the furthest planet from the Sun ...but what planetoid is furthest from the SUN? If you said Sedna, give yourself a pat on the back. Sedna is the unofficial name given to a recently discovered planet like object orbiting our Sun. The object is three times farther away from Earth than Pluto, making it the most distant known object in the solar system. We can thank Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who led the research team that made this discovery. (Mike Brown) “We still don’t exactly know what it is we found. We know that there is an object out there, we think it’s about 1,000 times in diameter and it orbits the Sun every 10,000 years but we’re not sure what to call it. It’s a little bit smaller than Pluto, it’s little bit bigger than an asteroid, we’ve been calling it a Planetoid.” Even though it orbits the Sun, it’s not quite big enough to be considered a planet. Sedna, which is about 8 billion miles from the Earth, is an extremely cold place where the temperature never rises above minus 240 degrees Celsius. So how did Mikes Brown’s team make this discovery? It’s interesting because first you need a very high powered telescope that can view and photograph the furthest reaches of our solar system. Because it is impossible to view something that far with any real detail you try and monitor a particular area of interest in the sky so that you can see if anything is moving over a period of time. Here is what Browns team noticed…if you look at this series of pictures notice that Sedna; which is this blurred object right here with an arrow above it slightly shifts from it’s original position while all the stars in the back ground don’t move at all. Browns team tracked Sedna for a long enough period of time to determine that it does indeed rotate around the Sun. Further examination by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed Brown’s discovery. If you want to learn more about Sedna check out the ATW website. That's it from the Science Desk. More Information The first detection of the faint distant object dubbed "Sedna." http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/planet_like_body.html Mysterious Sedna http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/16mar_sedna.htm Sedna of the Outer Solar System http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040316.html Check out the Hubble Site for more information about Sedna http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/14/ National Geographic News http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0315_040315_planetoid.html © 2004 WXXI-TV/ Assignment: The World. All Rights Reserved.