Eris, Planet X or Nabiru the

10thPlanet?

This distant, icy rock whose discovery shook up the solar system and led
to Pluto's planetary demise has been given a name: Eris.

The christening of Eris, named after the Greek goddess of chaos and
strife, was announced by the International Astronomical Union on
Wednesday. Weeks earlier, the professional astronomers' group stripped
Pluto of its planet-hood under new controversial guidelines. Since its
discovery last year, Eris ignited a debate over what constitutes a planet.

Astronomers were split over how to classify the object — which had
been known as 2003 UB313, its provisional numerical designation; or as
Xena, the informal code name that was chosen by its discoverers. Some
argued that it should be welcomed as the 10th planet since it was larger
than Pluto, but others felt Pluto was not a full-fledged planet. After much
bickering, astronomers last month voted to shrink the solar system to eight
planets, downgrading Pluto to a "dwarf planet," a category that also
includes Eris and the asteroid Ceres.

Eris' discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology,

said the name was an obvious choice, calling it "too perfect to resist." In
mythology, Eris caused a quarrel among goddesses that sparked the Trojan
War. In real life, Eris forced scientists to define a planet that eventually led
to Pluto getting the boot. Soon after Pluto's dismissal from the club of
classical planets, hundreds of scientists circulated a petition protesting the
decision.

Moon also gets an official name

Eris’s moon also received a formal name: Dysnomia, the daughter of
Eris known as the spirit of lawlessness. Dysnomia is the object formerly
known by the code name Gabrielle.
 While waiting for an official designation, Brown and his colleagues
reportedly used Xena as a code name because it called to mind the term
"Planet X," which commonly referred to a mysterious 10th planet. The name
also alluded to the title character in "Xena: Warrior Princess," a syndicated
sword-and-sorcery TV series.

"It's a little sad to see Xena go away," Brown said.

In the TV show, Gabrielle was Xena's sidekick. Coincidentally, Eris was

also the name of a character in "Xena: Warrior Princess."

The dwarf planet Eris, which measures about 70 miles (110 kilometers)
wider than Pluto, is the farthest known object in the solar system at 9
billion miles (14 billion kilometers) away from sun. It is also the third
brightest object located in the Kuiper Belt, a disc of icy debris beyond the
orbit of Neptune.

Dysnomia, the moon of Eris, the 10th

Planet!
On September 10th 2005, astronomers at the Keck Observatory on
Mauna Kea took a look at Eris with a new instrument that allows them to
see details as precise as those seen from the Hubble Space Telescope. The
images quickly revealed that it has a faint moon in orbit around it! The
team that found the satellite included the original discoverers of Eris plus
the large engineering team at the Keck Observatory who made the
observations possible. Technical details about the discovery can be found in
the scientific paper recently published.

The discovery of Dysnomia, the moon of Eris, from the W.M. Keck
Observatory. Eris appears in the centre, while the moon is the small dot at
the 3 o'clock position. Credit: M.E. Brown, W.M. Keck Observatory.

How was the moon found?

Eris is so far away that the moon appears quite close to it. So close,
in fact, that all of the telescopes that have looked at the planet up until now
have completely missed it. The telescopes miss it because the earth's
atmosphere blurs the view of the planet as the light makes its way to the
ground. In the past few years a technique known as Adaptive Optics has
allowed astronomers to measure and then partially correct for the blurring
caused by the atmosphere. One limitation of Adaptive Optics has been that
you must be looking at a very bright object to be able to measure the
blurring; otherwise you can make no corrections.

The Keck Observatory has recently commissioned a new cutting-edge

addition to its Adaptive Optics system. The new addition uses a laser beam
launched from the side of the telescope to make an artificial star in the sky
right next to the target. This laser star then allows Adaptive Optics to be
used even when the target is not particularly bright. Just one year ago,
observations such as these would have required the Hubble Space
Telescope. Today they can be made from observatories on earth.

Artist's concept of Eris and Dysnomia.

The sun and other planets appear in the distance. Credit: R. Hurt, IPAC.

Why is the discovery of the moon important?

While we know that Eris is larger than Pluto, that doesn't necessarily
mean it is more massive than Pluto. For example, a snowball could be
bigger than a rock, but still be much less massive. Pluto appears to be a
combination of ice and rock. If Eris were purely made out of ice, it could be
a good deal less massive than Pluto. Alternatively, if it is mostly rock, it
could be much more massive than Pluto. The one way to find out the mass
of an object like Eris is to hope to find a moon around it. Finding a moon,
and then determining the distance that the moon is from the planet and
how long it takes the moon to circle the planet allows us to precisely
measure the mass of the body. A more massive body will pull on the moon
tightly and it will circle the body more quickly.

A less massive body will allow the moon to have a slow lazy orbit
around the planet.
From a series of seven observations using the Keck Telescope and the
Hubble Space Telescope, we have now measured the complete orbit of
Dysnomia going around Eris. Dysnomia takes almost 16 days to go around
Eris. Using equations for used by Isaac Newton to figure out the mass of
Jupiter, we can now tell that Eris has a mass 27% higher than that of Pluto
(with an uncertainty of only 2%). The full orbit can be seen below.

Our best images came from the Hubble Space Telescope, and clearly
showed (much to our surprise) that Dysnomia is the only moon around.
These images, shown below, are so good that you also can see some of the
artefacts caused by the Hubble Space Telescope itself. In particular, the
spikes coming out of Eris, the spotty "ring" around Eris, and the slight
elongation to the right of Eris are all expected patterns caused by the
telescope itself, rather than from anything going around Eris.
 A second reason that discovering the moon is important is that
understanding how moons form provides insight into the history of the solar
system. It is quite surprising the 3 of the 4 largest objects in the Kuiper belt
(Eris, Pluto, and 2003 EL61) all have moons. Such a large fraction of objects
with moons suggests that some very common mechanism must be
responsible.

In the scientific paper describing the discovery we suggest the

hypothesis that the moons of Eris and 2003 EL61 were both formed from a
collision between Kuiper belt objects, much like it is thought the the Earth's
moon was formed from a collision between the Earth and an object about
the size of Mars. Understanding the orbit of the moon around the planet will
help to show if this hypothesis is feasible.

Images of the four largest Kuiper belt objects, from the Keck Observatory Laser
Guide Star Adaptive Optics system. Satellites are seen around all except for 2005
FY9. Without the adaptive optics system the images of the Kuiper belt objects
would he smeared out so much by the earth's atmosphere that the satellites would
not be visible.

Credit: M. Brown/Keck Observatory

Why the moon is called Dysnomia?

Dysnomia is the mythological daughter of Eris. Eris is, of course, the
Greek goddess of discord and strife. Dysnomia is the daemon spirit of
lawlessness.

What is the moon made out of?

It was long thought that all moons were made out of green cheese,
but that theory has been generally discredited. Currently we have no direct
evidence to tell us what the moon is made out of, but we have some
educated guesses.

We do know that the moon of 2003 EL61 (the third largest object in
the Kuiper belt, after Eris and Pluto) appears to be a ball of almost pure
frozen water. We know this because we have been able to look at the
sunlight reflected off the moon at infrared wavelengths and the pattern of
the light reflected shows us that there is frozen water and nothing else.
From the limited information that we have, Dysnomia appears like it might
be similar to the moon of 2003 EL61 (2003 EL61 was code named Santa, by
the way, so the satellite is, of course, Rudolph). We are planning to use the
Hubble Space Telescope later this year to study Dysnomia in more detail.

How big is the moon?

Right now we are not certain how big the moon is, but we can make
some guesses based on how much light it reflects. We know that it is about
500 times fainter than Eris, suggesting that it is perhaps 22 times smaller in
diameter than Eris. Eris is about 2400 km in diameter, so Dysnomia is
perhaps 100 km in diameter. It is possible however, that Dysnomia has a
darker surface than Eris's very frosty highly reflective surface. In this
case, Dysnomia could plausibly be as large as about 250 km.

All related material was from: web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/moon/ -

THE BIG QUESTIONS STILL REMAIN, LARGELY UNANSWERED…

Whether or not this planet, officially the tenth in our solar

system, with its own satellite is the infamous “Nabiru” of Ancient
Sumerian fables, or is it the other prophetic sign of “End of
Days”, the Wormwood of Biblical scripture? All these different
scenarios are now a possibility and could be played out within
the next decade or so, as its not due to be anywhere near us,
planet Earth until the year….?

KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES, IT COULD HAPPEN ANYTIME !

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Arc Orb.