Μake us preferred on Google Beyond Pluto’s orbit, in the frozen outer reaches of the Solar System, astronomers have discovered a large new body that may be recognized as another dwarf planet.
The object, “2026 ED138,” was discovered with the brand-new American Vera Rubin telescope in Chile. Its diameter is estimated at 600 to 1,500 kilometers, and it is 46 times farther from the Sun than Earth is (the image shows its path across the sky from 1 to 31 May 2026).
To be classified as a dwarf planet, a body must orbit the Sun and have enough mass for gravity to have given it a spherical shape. 2026 ED138 appears to meet these conditions, but more observations are needed to confirm it.
“The most important thing is to determine the actual size of 2026 ED138,” said Matt Holman of Harvard, who led the team that presented the study at a conference in Washington State. “When we look with the Rubin telescope, we see sunlight reflected off the object. A small object that is more reflective would look just as bright as a large object that is less reflective,” the researcher explained.
He said a more accurate size estimate could come from ALMA, an array of radio telescopes in Chile that can detect the object’s own thermal radiation. That glow is extremely faint, since the temperature at that distance from the Sun is around -230 degrees Celsius.
If it does meet the criteria, 2026 ED138 would become the sixth dwarf planet recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Only one, Ceres, is in the Asteroid Belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The rest, Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake, are in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies that surrounds the eight planets of the Solar System.
