Planet Nine , Planet X
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Budgieye
moderator
If it exists... it is probably in the northern hemisphere so SDSS and DECaLS may have already imaged it.
It is a perpendicular KBO (Kieper Belt Object) a, and apparently going north of the ecliptic.
http://www.space.com/31671-planet-nine-discovery-explained-infographic.html
Computer simulations heat up hunt for Planet Nine Evidence accumulates for presence of orb on outskirts of solar system BY CHRISTOPHER CROCKETT 8:00AM, JANUARY 31, 2016
The Victor Blanco telescope in Chile and Subaru telescope in Hawaii
are the best facilities for undertaking the search, Schwamb says.
Both have cameras that can see large swaths of sky. If scientists
don’t mind waiting, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will come
online in 2023. Currently being built in Chile, LSST will image the
entire sky once every three days.“We would be able to detect Planet Nine even if it was moving slowly,”
says Lynne Jones, an astronomer and LSST scientist at the University
of Washington in Seattle. “We could look for motion from month to
month or over the course of a year and quickly pick it out from the
background stars.”There’s also the possibility, though remote, that a serendipitous
picture of the planet already exists. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were
all seen before anyone realized they were planets, dwarf or otherwise.
Most observations don’t record things as faint as Planet Nine. “But
there’s lots of archival data,” Sheppard says, accumulated in
observatories as astronomers gather images of stars, nebulas and
galaxies. “This could be sitting there somewhere.”https://www.sciencenews.org/article/computer-simulations-heat-hunt-planet-nine
https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet-49523
Batygin and Brown continue to refine their simulations and learn more
about the planet's orbit and its influence on the distant solar
system. Meanwhile, Brown and other colleagues have begun searching the
skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet's rough orbit is known, not the
precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet
happens to be close to its perihelion, Brown says, astronomers should
be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys. If it is in
the most distant part of its orbit, the world's largest
telescopes—such as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck
Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Mauna Kea in Hawaii—will
be needed to see it. If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere
in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it."I would love to find it," says Brown. "But I'd also be perfectly
happy if someone else found it. That is why we're publishing this
paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start
searching."
What might this planet look like? See similar KBO in this discussion by planetaryscience On the discovery and precovery of Trans-Neptunian Objects from SDSS images http://talk.galaxyzoo.org/#/boards/BGZ0000007/discussions/DGZ000116c
But with Planet X, the orbit is not known exactly. But it would be slow moving, and won't be the 3 colour image that asteroids have.
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Here is a general idea of the astrometric details on the planet, using orbits supplied by Brown et al, my own independent research in late December, and further recent investigation by Carlos, a friend of mine:
The planet makes one revolution around the sun in about 10,000-15,000 years, which I am currently refining with orbital resonances with asteroids and comets. Depending on where it is in this orbit, that means that it makes a yearly movement of about 1.4-2.2 arcminutes a year (which translates to about 5.8-8.6 arcseconds in sexagesimal RA.) However it could be lower depending on actual eccentricity (which at this point is only assumed-with-good-reason.) However this does not take into account parallax constants, which are a significant value for solar-system objects of any distance- 90377 Sedna has an annual parallax of several times larger than its annual movement. The annual estimated parallax for Nine would be about 13.7 arcminutes (55 arcseconds in sexagesimal RA.) Assuming both of these values are moving in a positive direction, Nine moves about 1700 μas a minute at maximum- SDSS exposure, for comparison is about 5 minutes and 58 seconds for every band, leading to an apparent motion in SDSS images of ~0.01 arcseconds (0.00068 arcseconds in sexagesimal RA) making any hope of spotting it based on movement effectively impossible; with my experience in observing asteroids, they need a minimum of 1 arcsecond/minute (6 arcseconds per field) to notice movement- about 100 times more than is available.
On the bright side, I have found low movement makes it much easier to see dim asteroids. While typical MBAs have a limiting magnitude around 22.3-22.7, due to the 'stacking' of the observations of more distant asteroids, I have been able to spot objects as dim as 23.3-23.5 in R mag (somewhere around 23.5-24.5 in V mag)- which might give a good chance of finding Nine. Using Carlos's estimated locations the area Nine is in is covered entirely SDSS and about 40% by DECaLS.
Here is my suggestion:
Perhaps we could begin a citizen science project to look at overlapping fields covered by SDSS, 2MASS, DECaLS, and perhaps even UKIDSS to compare objects in one field that are not in the other in the expected area (RA 6 - 11, DEC +3 - +9) and have users classify them based on whether it is visible in other fields, whether there is clearly visible movement, what color it is, or whether it could be a non-asteroidal object.
After that, unlike nearer objects, Nine would be staying in the same position for a very long time, so even if the particular candidate image of it was taken in 1998 (SDSS's oldest imaging date) we would still be able to know where the object is in the sky now to a resolution of a few arcminutes.
Additionally, such a project might be able to look at catalogs of the position of known asteroids at the observing time and remove objects near them from the data set.
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Ghost_Sheep_SWR
in response to planetaryscience's comment.
That would be really cool if possible, count me in! Although setting up a new project like this is seriously time-consuming i can imagine.
Small SDSS / DECaLS DR1 blink test, looks good? 😃
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planetaryscience
in response to Ghost_Sheep_SWR's comment.
A clear problem that one might see using images such as this one, is that even though there are clearly only two actual sources, the theoretical program would pick up several dozen, such as the cosmic rays, image brightness differences, and likely pure static. It might not even pick up the object at center due to its vicinity to a small galaxy. Perhaps an alternative would be that, instead of showing objects a program picked up, just slicing the sky into 15-arcsecond areas and asking people to identify their own transients.
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Oh hadn't even considered a program that would select objects for inspection, but indeed just slicing up the SDSS / DECaLS etc. overlapping area's irrespectable of transients or not.
Brightness might be fixed and artifacts ignored, magnitude differences might be a big problem though. In every small DECaLS area there are a dozen more faint objects than in SDSS just due to this. And if i'm right Nine would be around this magnitude?
Brightness / speed adjusted
Hmm shouldn't stare too long, not quite lined up properly 😃
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planetaryscience
in response to Ghost_Sheep_SWR's comment.
Well considering Nine is confined to a (relatively) small part of the sky covered (of course) entirely by 2MASS as well as nearly entirely by SDSS and partially by DECaLS, now the only problem left for building this project is to find a way to quickly slice up the fields and upload them. I've tried with a couple but so far it's taken me five minutes just to upload two SDSS/2MASS comparisons covering 200 arsceconds in RA and 400 arcseconds in DEC. There should be (and I imagine there is as this must be a frequently-encountered problem) a system to upload these in less time than it would take to classify them! 😉
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Budgieye
moderator
IceHunters used difference images.
Zooniverse website: Ice Hunters: Find targets for the New Horizons probe https://www.zooniverse.org/project/icehunters?lang=en "Thanks to your hard work, we've sorted through all the available data and this project is now retired. "
A screenshot of the new citizen science project, Icehunters, produced by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in collaboration with the New Horizons project and Zooniverse.
The difference images used on Icehunters.org, were created by subtracting two telescopic wide field-images from each other .The image to the right shows blobs and streaks marked with a circle and an asterisk respectively. Blobs are Kuiper Belt objects, while streaks are asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.8.3 asteroids, ice worlds, TransNeptunian Objects http://talk.galaxyzoo.org/#/boards/BGZ0000001/discussions/DGZ0000wrb?page=8&comment_id=53d8bc1e0d43f776b00010bb
The software must be still around.
EDIT: I think it would be too much work for volunteers. I wonder if Zooniverse could get onto it.
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to planetaryscience's comment.
Most zoo images are compressed for transmission, which makes for fuzzier images.
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zutopian
Please be informed about the related "Zooniverse Talk" discussion!:
planet 9, could someone with access to big telescope data set up a new project to search
https://www.zooniverse.org/talk/18/36037Posted
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The estimated magnitude of Nine as I would calculate it is between magnitude 20 and 24 at its current distance, with a value of about 21.8 as most probable by a small margin. This puts it mostly in the view of SDSS. Additionally someone did an analysis recently to refine Nine's possible location to within about 20 degrees. That corresponds to an area a couple of hours in RA across. However the authors mention that it could be in a number of other areas across its orbit, putting only about 20% of its orbit completely off-limits- an area which could have been assumed based on the observed data anyways.
Here is the full paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.06116v1.pdf
Meanwhile I have a zooniverse project underway, if you hadn't guessed it yet, to look at the data.
Regarding Budgieye's comment on image subtraction, the system I do not believe would be a wide improvement over the current images- they are from different telescopes, using different wavelengths, for different surveys. As such, the noise, sensitivity, and artifacts are different for all of them- an automatic subtraction would do nothing but create an excessive amount of static.
Currently my main problems are in providing multiple blink images to analyze, an ability to mark individual objects on the image, and a system for uploading large amounts of images quickly. I found that I can compress the images I am working with to about 150 kb with minimal data loss.
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to zutopian's comment.
Thank you Zutopian, I'll watch that discussion.
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Since the project-building zooniverse board does not seem to be very active at all, I'll pose the question here which everyone else seems to have found out:
How does one manage to display multiple images for a project? I ask so that I can compare the SDSS/2MASS images.
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Constraints on the location of a possible 9th planet derived from the Cassini data
A. Fienga, J. Laskar, H. Manche, M. Gastineau
(Submitted on 19 Feb 2016 (v1), last revised 23 Feb 2016 (this version, v3))To explain the unusual distribution of Kuiper Belt objects, several authors have advocated the existence of a super-Earth planet in the outer solar system. It has recently been proposed that a 10 M⊕ object with an orbit of 700 AU semi major axis and 0.6 eccentricity can explain the observed distribution of Kuiper Belt objects around Sedna. Here we use the INPOP planetary ephemerides model as a sensor for testing for an additional body in the solar system. We test the possibility of adding the proposed planet without increasing the residuals of the planetary ephemerides, fitted over the whole INPOP planetary data sample. We demonstrate that the presence of such an object is not compatible with the most sensitive data set, the Cassini radio ranging data, if its true anomaly is in the intervals [−130∘:−100∘] or [−65∘:85∘]. Moreover, we find that the addition of this object can reduce the Cassini residuals, with a most probable position given by a true anomaly v=117.8∘+11∘−10∘.
Constraints on the location of a possible 9th planet derived from the Cassini data
http://www.space.com/32037-saturn-probe-cassini-planet-nine-search.html
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Good news! I got the project working in an early testing phase (only 19 images to classify ATM!) Currently it covers a very small area of sky; 200 arcseconds by one degree. However I am working on adding significantly more soon.
You can test the project yourself here:
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/planetaryscience/x-marks-the-spot/homePosted
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Congratulations planetaryscience on Project Planet IX! Always thought 'Planet X' is confusing for a ninth planet 😃
I tried to start a discussion but it keeps hanging in limbo, so i'll post it here instead;
Some preliminary feedback ( not being negative!);
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2mass seems to be too coarse in resolution for comparison, maybe add DECaLS?
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speed of blink might be upped, to 100ms maybe?
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can 'play' be set to infinite?
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displayed areas are rather large it seems, maybe use 1/4th of current size?
Nice work, really impressive ( might be stealing some zooites here 😉 )
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planetaryscience
in response to Ghost_Sheep_SWR's comment.
Regarding the first question, the area covered at the moment is not covered by DECaLS. I plan on later adding in DECaLS images with SDSS once I reach the covered area. Unfortunately they store their images rather unusually, so it might take some time to upload images for them.
2: While the zooniverse project builder is helpful and easy to make a project in, it doesn't offer full customization in some respects, including image 'blink' speed.
3: Same thing as #2 although I find it unusual that it should do that, and plan on contacting someone about it.
4: That sounds like quite a good idea, actually! The current area is about 200x200 arcseconds, and I considered the possbility of instead slicing it up to 100x100, but never seriously considered it. The area I would be surveying would stay constant, though, so it would up the total classifiable images from ~20,000 to ~80,000. At the moment, I'm still trying to find a way to upload the images rather efficiently as I have to manually upload every one.
Also, regarding X versus nine, I began the project before it was widely named Planet Nine, and IMO 'X marks the spot' sounds cooler than 'Nine marks the spot'. Perhaps I'll think on it.
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Ghost_Sheep_SWR
in response to planetaryscience's comment.
Also, regarding X versus nine, I began the project before it was widely named Planet Nine, and IMO 'X marks the spot' sounds cooler than 'Nine marks the spot'. Perhaps I'll think on it.
No i did't mean changing the name, it's cool as it is. I meant that 'Planet X' is confusing in regards to Roman numericals; it would mean 'Planet 10'. So helping find Planet IX' looks about right to me when searching for nr. 9 😃
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williamaskew
Searching for Planet 9: Researchers Narrow Its Likely Whereabouts
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2715.htm
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planetaryscience
in response to williamaskew's comment.
Skimming over the paper, I don't see anywhere it mentions what part of the sky this corresponds to. Is it possible to use the data provided to better refine the project's search area?
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williamaskew
in response to planetaryscience's comment.
I wouldnt trust my math to extrapolate coordinates from what data is available. Perhaps someone from the science team could help with that or contact the author of paper Jacques Laskar.
Terrific project ,by the way. It has a good feel and easy to navigate. one thing i might change is to lengthen the play time. as it is it's only 3 blinks and find myself having to hit the play button a lot. The rest is Aces!
Billy
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Budgieye
moderator
If you look at this image from Flickr, I saw two "stars" that had moved their position between the two images, but I was unable to mark them with the markers.. There is no 3 colour change in the image, they are just in a different position.
Edit: link deleted
I'll try again in the next frame.
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Ghost_Sheep_SWR
in response to planetaryscience's comment.
From Space.com:
Brown and Batygin did not propose a specific path that Planet Nine would take through space but rather a possible range in which it could exist, about 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune is. The path of a planet around the sun includes how far it is from the sun, how oblong its orbit is (instead of a perfect circle) and how tilted its orbit is compared to the plane of the solar system.
*Fienga and her colleagues selected an orbit for Planet Nine out of the range suggested by Brown and Batygin, and added it to the INPOP model of the solar system. From there, they determined that the planet could not be in certain regions, because it would have caused perturbations in the motions of the other planets that should have been detectable by observations, like those made by Cassini.
- See more at: http://www.space.com/32037-saturn-probe-cassini-planet-nine-search.html#sthash.zPCPEfLL.dpuf*
So apparantly it involves obtaining these orbits from Brown et al., guess which orbit Fienga et al. selected from these and then apply the region presented in below image, with values only in AU's in the original paper. 8)
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate
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Ghost_Sheep_SWR
in response to Budgieye's comment.
Why couldn't you mark them?
I've noticed that when you put a marker in one image and then switch to the other, your marker stays in the first one. This might be the problem?
It seems you have to switch the images before placing a marker, but can always press the 'back' button to start over
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planetaryscience
in response to Budgieye's comment.
The upper object seems too dim to be visible with any accuracy in 2MASS images- I would say it is mostly static.
The lower object is a reflection of the bright star on the left. the 2MASS survey has an unfortunate habit of making vertical series of dots near bright stars, and I am thinking of possible ways to fix this or notify users not to mark objects in that area.
Additionally, I wouldn't expect any non-stellar objects to be visible moving in both of these images. Even objects with low motion, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, have a high parallax from the Earth's orbit alone, making it quite unlikely that they would be seen in both exposures.
For William, the specific amount of 'flipping' for the individual images is beyond my control. The project maker appears to have a set amount of three flips and no more, no less.
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to Ghost_Sheep_SWR's comment.
I couldn't mark them, because I didn't notice that I couldn't mark both at once. I have to answer the questions about one before I can mark the next.
Also, I didn't notice the arrow to make the image flicker. I was doing it manually. Nay smart!
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to Ghost_Sheep_SWR's comment.
It is taking me 10 minutes to look at an image, mostly because I don't know what I am doing.
Do we only look at the brightest stars? Are planets likely to be a brownish colour in SDSS?
If a white star is replaced by a green blob in 2MASS image, does that mean that the star is still in the same position?
If a white star is replace by a small white blob, is that better?
Are you only looking for green red blue asteroid type events?
I counted 4 things that I wanted to mark, and by the end I could only find 3 of them.
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Ghost_Sheep_SWR
in response to Budgieye's comment.
I think these are questions for planetaryscience,
I think when / if DECaLS is added to the mix this will solve a lot of visability issues. Also i think the image sizes are still a bit of an issue, if these were smaller it's better to make out objects in 2MASS.
For now for me a blob of any color in 2MASS very near the position of an object in SDSS is good enough for me to say it is a non-transient, or a very faint one in SDSS i can only dismiss now..
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planetaryscience
in response to Budgieye's comment.
Due to significant support towards it, I will make an effort to have the DECaLS images available today.
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ElisabethB
moderator
Is there a reason why the discussion of this project is here on GZ Talk in stead of on the project's Talk ?
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Nope, good point
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Budgieye
moderator
Find Planet X (Planet Nine)
x-marks-the-spot/ https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/planetaryscience/x-marks-the-spot/home
Please continue discussion in x-marks-the-spot/ Talk:
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/planetaryscience/x-marks-the-spot/talk
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Budgieye
moderator
Latest on Planet Nine: The ecliptic is not in line with the equator of the Sun, due to tilt of Planet X orbit.
https://knowridge.com/2016/11/curious-tilt-of-the-sun-traced-to-undiscovered-planet-nine/
Looking for heat detection using an infrared telescope.
https://twitter.com/plutokiller/status/808678784677199872
Currently in a distant part of its orbit, in Orion or Cetus - from interview on Sky at Night.
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New paper on Planet 9 with orbital images on page 12 and 13:
Constraints on Planet Nine's Orbit and Sky Position within a Framework of Mean Motion Resonances
By Sarah Millholland, Gregory Laughlin
(Submitted on 22 Dec 2016)https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07774
Supplemented by a neat manipulable 3D figure here https://smillholland.github.io/P9_Orbit/
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Budgieye
moderator
Many locations? . Fig. 13
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Budgieye
moderator
BBC’s Stargazing Live will find new planet in Solar System says Professor Brian Cox
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019h4g8
Viewers will get involved by visiting a Zooniverse website where they
will be presented with photographic images to compare, taken by
SkyMapper at different times. There are hundreds of thousands of
images, which is too many for a few astronomers to check easily, but
an army of enthusiasts should be able to go through them in no time.Brian said: “It’s like an asteroid search but with photographs spread
out over a much greater time interval. So you’re looking for a
shifting dot against the background. The data’s there, so if the
planet is there, and given that we have hundreds of thousands of views
… which we do, we have half a million usually, easily … then we WILL
find it.”
The dome housing the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring which has made a detailed survey of the night sky. Image credit: Australian National University
EDIT:
link to the classification website https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/skymap/planet-9
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Budgieye
moderator
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Help scan the realm beyond Neptune for brown dwarfs and planet nine.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9
The WISE All-Sky Infrared Survey We will be scanning the Solar
System's frontier using infrared images from NASA's Wide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. While ordinary stars and
the familiar eight planets shine brightly at visible wavelengths,
brown dwarfs glow mainly in the infrared. Planet nine should also glow
in the infrared.Here at Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, you'll look at false-color images
that combine two WISE bands that would be impossible for the naked eye
to see. Blue represents light with a wavelength of about 3.4 microns;
red represents light with a wavelength of about 4.6 microns. We've
pre-processed those infrared images from WISE using the unWISE
pipeline, combining images that span about 5 years, including images
from NEOWISE (the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission).
Subtracting images taken years apart creates negative images, which
makes faster moving objects look like "movers" and slower moving
objects look like "dipoles". When you find these objects of interest,
you'll mark them with a marking tool.
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to Budgieye's comment.
Planet Nine website has had a million classifications in the first day. In less than 2 days, it is has over 3 million.
Link to the Planet Nine classification website https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/skymap/planet-9
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Budgieye
moderator
in response to Budgieye's comment.
Planet Nine project got 5 millions classifications in 3 days, and is now closed. They didn't find Planet Nine, because cloud prevented follow up by a larger telescope, but have identified many objects. It will probably take some time to sift through the data.
Known objects discovered in the search https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/skymap/planet-9/talk/793/243564
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