Friday, April 7, 2006

 

Mike Brown, Caltech

"The Tenth Planet (and friends)"

4:00 pm in room PA-216 (note special time, and place)

Abstract: For the past seven years we've been engaged in a large scale survey searching for the largest objects beyond Neptune. In 2005, after a search

of about half of the sky and the discovery of dozens of objects almost the size of Pluto, we found 2003 UB313, the first object larger than Pluto and

the largest object found in the solar system since 1848. I'll describe the survey leading to the discovery as well as what we've learned so far about this object and the other large icy planetoids of the outer solar system.