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> its orbit takes it from just beyond the orbit of Saturn (10.9 AU) all the way out to the Oort Cloud It looks like it currently orbits the sun.
by clajiness 5y ago
> its orbit takes it from just beyond the orbit of Saturn (10.9 AU) all the way out to the Oort Cloud
It looks like it currently orbits the sun.
- ptcrash 5y agoAh, for some reason I read the original message as some new dwarf planet was outside our solar system and had a trajectory towards it. Thanks for the clarification.
- perl4ever 5y agoAccording to the link, the outgoing aphelion will be almost 40% more than the previous one, so I wouldn't assume it's going to orbit indefinitely.
- elihu 5y agoThat seems awfully weird. Is that something that things orbiting the sun normally do?
- perl4ever 5y agoMy intuition is that anything with a really eccentric orbit (10s to 10s of thousands of AU) has more of a chance of passing through many gravitational fields that change its orbit.
- elihu 5y agoI suppose that makes sense... if something is in an orbit that's flattened down until it's only slightly off from being a straight line in and out, then any very slight perturbations could really affect how close it comes to the sun on the next pass. The sun moves too a little bit, due to the pull of the planets. Maybe it's enough to make a difference?