The solar system may have a sixth dwarf planet, hidden against the Milky Way
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First look: The solar system's official roster of dwarf planets has held at five names since 2008. But a new observatory in Chile has spotted an icy world beyond Pluto that could become the sixth. It might also be the largest object found out past Neptune in about 20 years.
For now, the object announced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory team earlier this week only goes by its provisional designation, 2026 ED138. It currently sits about 46 astronomical units from the Sun. Pluto, by comparison, averages around 40.
Nobody has measured its size directly yet. Instead, astronomers worked backward from how bright it looks at that distance, plus an estimate of how reflective its surface is, to arrive at somewhere between 600 and 1,500 km across. Even the middle of that range...
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