Astronomy is always finding something new out in the distant regions of space that change
the way we think about our universe. Essentially when you go far enough away from the Sun there's
enough room to hide almost anything you want from black holes and quasars to nebulae and
dark matter the universe is filled with weird and strange objects but sometimes interesting
objects can be found in places you would least expect them right in our own backyard
say hello to DeeDee astronomers have been able to send spacecraft on missions out of
our solar system into Interstellar space and have built telescopes that have the ability to
look billions of years into our universe's past so it may be surprising that there is still a
lot that has yet to be discovered within our own solar system there are regions here that have yet
to be explored with new objects and phenomena to be found back in 2016 scientists discovered the
first new object that could qualify as a planetary body far out toward the edge of our solar system
the object now called DeeDee has captured the focus of many astronomers over the past six
years as they work to uncover as much as they can about its physical characteristics the regions it
was found were far beyond Pluto in an area of the solar system that is surprisingly rich with
Rocky objects ranging from very small pieces all the way up to objects the size of a blue
dwarf planet and possibly quite a bit larger in the case of DD the Atacama large millimeter
array Alma found that it has a spherical shape and is roughly 635 kilometers across it also
orbits the Sun at an extreme distance compared to the rest of the planets at 92 astronomical units
one astronomical unit is the distance from the Sun to the Earth this makes deities
orbit around the sun more than three times larger than the distance of Neptune's orbit
this dwarf planet offers an opportunity to study a new planetary object that has never been seen
the region far beyond Pluto there are still a lot of things that we don't know about the far
reaches of our solar system beyond the dwarf planet Pluto to this day only a handful of
spacecraft have ever made it to Pluto and the regions of space beyond these crafts
including the recent ship built for the New Horizon Mission and the two Voyager spacecraft
that are now flying through interstellar space billions of kilometers from Earth
without many probes taking actual data from this far region astronomers have come to rely
on different methods of observation and testing to learn about the edges of our solar system
luckily there are a number of different telescopes that can analyze various parts
of the electromagnetic spectrum that can be used to probe and explore this area right now
astronomers believe that during the tumultuous and chaotic time in the Solar System's past when
the main planets were forming around the Sun these objects that populate the far reaches were created
from the remnants and debris of that process has time passed these objects were ejected from the
inner solar system by the combined gravitational pulls of the planet to find a stable orbit far out
dwarf planets and other planetary bodies among the planetary objects in our solar system there
are a few classifications that astronomers like to use including dwarf planets which are described as
celestial bodies that orbit a star and that have enough Mass to form a shape that is nearly round
before this most recent discovery there were five of the commonly known dwarf planets within the
solar system Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makimake, and Haumea astronomers are unsure how many
dwarf planets are out there hiding in our solar system but with the introduction of more powerful
telescopes and other instruments the majority of them hopefully will not stay hidden for long
DD's classification with the new data that came in from Alma astronomers had enough evidence to
go ahead and classify DD as an official dwarf planet this makes the official number of dwarf
planets in our solar system up to six but who knows how long that number will stay
one region of the solar system that scientists are eager to study more is the Kuiper belt which
has the potential to hold many more objects that could offer more clues about our star systems past
the Kuiper belt I found the Kuiper belt with chain Liu the Kuiper belt sits in the outer regions
of the planetary system with the majority of the material beyond the orbit of Neptune so the puzzle
in 1985 the puzzle was why is it that the inner part of the solar system is full of asteroids and
comets and all kinds of things planets all this stuff but then when you go beyond Saturn there's
Uranus there's Neptune and there's Pluto and then that's it the answer was well let's have a
look this region is huge it is one of the biggest structures in our solar system joining the likes
of the heliosphere of the Sun or the Oort cloud a collection of icy objects orbiting around the
heliosphere shaped like a puffed up donut the Kuiper belt begins around 30 astronomical units
away from the Sun 30 times the distance of the Earth's orbit while the outer edge overlaps into
the region known as the scatter disc which extends out a distance of nearly 1 000 astronomical units
just like DeeDee the Kuiper belt is believed to be composed of objects called Kuiper Belt Objects
or KBOs that were formed during the formation of the inner planets during the first few million
years after the Solar System's birth because of this scientists imagine that the objects within
its boundaries hold many hints about what it was like during a period of the solar system when the
planets were mostly just balls of hot magma long before the Earth cooled enough to allow
liquid water to pool on its surface what has been found out there within the Kuiper belt just over
2,000 objects have been identified and cataloged so far which only scratches the surface of the
objects that live within this region according to recent estimations there should be hundreds
of thousands of objects inside the Kuiper belt that measure at least 60 kilometers and
potentially much larger in addition to these larger objects in orbit there are countless
smaller objects accompanying them but there used to be a lot more well-supported and accepted
theories regarding the Kuiper belt explains how the gravitational pull from the shifting orbits
of the gas giants of our Solar System Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune have caused much of
the material and the belt to be lost right now scientists estimate that the material in
the Kuiper belt would equal approximately 10 percent of the Earth's mass but in the early
solar system before it was eroded the Kuiper belt likely contained material equal to 7 to 10 Earths
future exploration of our solar system so far only two man-made objects have cleared
the entirety of our solar system and made it to Interstellar space and only nine spacecrafts have
been launched to study the outer planets there is still so much left to explore and learn in
our home star system even the James Webb Space Telescope has now been used to study the other
planets in much more detail than ever before and has already revealed new information about a few
of the planets we know less about like Jupiter and Saturn just this year NASA announced that
it would extend at least eight of their missions currently studying various regions of the solar
system including extending the amount of time New Horizons will spend studying the Kuiper Belt and
the regions BEYOND. Who knows what they'll find as they spend more time searching the unknown.
Thanks for watching! Do you think astronomers should focus more on what is happening within
our solar system or would it be better to concentrate their focus on the rest of
the universe? Let us know in the comments down below! See you next time on Matter!