Congratulations to Eamonn Ansbro

Hi Mike and Joe,

First of all may I apologise for answering you until now. I've been outside the country for the last few weeks and only now trying to catch up on correspondence.

Thanks for your questions which are challenging and quite specific.

Regarding your specific questions:

Mike,

Size of the planet X or Brown Dwarf?
What distance is the Brown Dwarf?

Joe,

What revolution around the Sun?
What colour?
Are their planets orbiting it?

Before answering, I’ll give you both a background summation to the Planet X / Brown Dwarf research in our Solar System.

Until 2005 it had been postulated that there could be a Planet X in the Solar System which could be at any distance from 100 AU to 100,000 AU, dependent on the interpretation of the observations of potentially perturbed objects. A new planet location would depend on the dynamics within the Solar System including the Oort Cloud.

Researchers have hypothesised the existence of an undiscovered planet based on the following, regions of the outer Solar System where there has been clumping of a larger number of comets; specific analysis of some comet orbits; perturbations of the outer planets and /or a signature large mass body extracted from resonant architectural structure of the Edgeworth Kuiper Belt, but none had indicated specific location until now.

These theories allow upper and lower bounds to be put on the orbital radius of such a planet. Both 80 to 500 AU distances are so near that a planet should have been found with recent surveys that have covered both hemispheres. The selected upper bound was 100,000 AU while the lower bound was 10,000 AU. This suggests a radius to within one order of magnitude. If the lower bound were closer than 10,000 AU the gravitational effects would be more noticeable, and so planet X would have been discovered already. If the upper bound were further away than 100,000 AU the postulated gravitational effects on the comets would not have been measureable. In addition there are also galactic gravitational effects. It appears to be an object that is slightly closer to our Sun.

Many extra-solar planets have now been discovered with masses close to those estimated for a Planet X. However, I believe we are not dealing with a planet as we know it. It would be in the category of a planet which has an upper mass predicted a mass of 3 ± 2 -5MJup.

Based on the comet clumping model in the outer Solar System, and eliminating surveys at the only location based on this modelling, this rules out any large body at 10k AU to 40k AU. My survey didn’t show a planet at those distances.

There is some large body effecting those comets and also the EK belt. The most likely location is in the same general coordinates covering about 100 square degrees. Our planet X has now become a Brown Dwarf with a
the boundary of being a small Brown Dwarf. The defining differences between a very-low-mass Brown Dwarf and a giant planet (~13 MJ). The suspected object is somewhere between 3 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter. Its probably a Y dwarf. The four closest known systems now consist of two M Dwarfs and one member of every other spectral type from G through Y.

The coldest Brown Dwarfs are dim star like bodies that lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel as stars do. The outer colour appearance of the Brown Dwarf could be blue at these low temperatures of 250 K. This temperature is as cold as the North Pole (or between minus 48 to minus 13 degrees Celsius. The estimated distance based on this modelling is 92k AU.

It is common to have stars that have failed (being Brown Dwarfs), and are binary (twin stars) also being a common feature in our Galaxy. It is also common to have planets, based on Keplar exoplanet results. The average number of planets revoloving around planet producing stars is 5 to 6.

This proposed Brown Dwarf is very cool and with its possible orbiting planets, reduces the temperature and therefore its detectability in a specific Y range of the Brown Dwarf types.

In summary.
Size around 100k miles in diameter.
Distance: 92k AU
Revolution: 25 million years
Colour: Blue
Planets: 5 or 6

Although this gives you a quick answer. I do hope it gives you a flavour of what may be out there. This research is still in its infancy and controversial to other astronomers. Hey!, history in science has been plagued by controversial topics that turned out to be true in the end. Its funny, when you provide facts and evidence to other scientists they may not realise that the answer is staring them in the face.

Eamonn

Interesting

This is really interesting Eamonn, I agree that if it was a big planet in closer to the Sun it would have been found by now, I do agree that we could be dealing with an exotic object with one such explanation such as an extremely faint (maybe a V-mag of +30) a cool to very cool high mass brown dwarf (BD) even as you say with possible planets and perhaps dust, asteroids etc, I had to check that one up and indeed there has been BDs discovered with attending planet/s and also that all BDs are similar in size to Jupiter but their mass varies greatly, with an upper limit to around 80 Jupiter masses before nuclear fusion begins and thus it becomes a star.

I wonder therefore if this hypothetical BD was born from the same solar nebula or perhaps it was passing by our Sol system at one time in the solar systems past and became captured and settled into an eccentric orbit, perhaps as you say 90k AU but this could be a close approach and perhaps may reach an aphelion point of 130k AU.

I remember looking at the work from the Binary Research Institute; they were studying precession of the equinoxes that can be explained due to solar system motion through space, causing a reorientation of the earth relative to the fixed stars as the solar system gradually curves through space (the binary theory or model). In effect if you can imagine the Sun moving through space it will move in a cork-screw pattern if the Sun has a relatively high mass companion, this would also help explain the discrepancy in the distribution standard model, if you complete a log angular momentum to mass ratio graph there is missing mass to explain the current model, if you add in a relatively high mass Sol companion it starts to work out very nicely.
www.binaryresearchinstitute.org/

If I take a BD to be around 0.04 Sun mass and place it around 1.5 light years distant, this would give the centre of mass for our hypothetical Sol binary system ~4,000 AU from the Sun. In theory such a companion object should have relatively large parallax (perhaps 2.5 arcsec/yr) but small proper motion.

Sorry my mind is racing ahead, its mind boggling to think about it, one of the many reasons I love astronomy, the question is where exactly and how to look for this object?

Mike

Mike,

Regarding your question "where exactly and how to look for this object?" can be justified by the following:

1. We have a concentration of clumping of comets from the Oort comet cloud. This is due to a combination of perturbations and impulses from within our Galaxy. The object in question is likely to be a free floater and will be a "Goldilocks" companion. Studies have shown that very wide binary stars may form during the star cluster dissolution phase. (Kouwenhoven et al. 2010). A wide-binary solar companion also could have been captured in the Sun’s youth. A microlensing study (Sumi et al. 2011) suggests that a population of unbound or distant Jupiter mass objects may be more common than stars in our Galaxy. This explains the above scenario that is real and not an anomaly

2. Assuming a binary BD mass relationship with our Sun, as you outlined in your previous post, then one can calculate its location.

I listed characteristics previously, showing the best fit temperature, distance and the mass fit of this cold BD.

Based on the above there are two possible locations. The first calculated one covers 100 square degrees in the Northern hemisphere. (comet clumping model) The other is nearby covering a narrow region also calculated in the Northern hemisphere. ("Goldilocks" companion model)

The focus is to search at these two locations in specific IR bands that correlate with such a BD.

I hope that clarifies in principle the general strategy and locations.

Eamonn

Hi Eamonn
I was pondering the other day as regards the 43 ‘suspect planet’ objects that didn’t show signs of a planet. If these bodies didn’t show any signs where do you expect to find the planet?

Joe,

Apologies for the late reply.

Those original 43 suspect planets in a specific region of the sky were detected by the 0.9m telescope/CCD camera. (based in Roscommon) These images were in the visible unfiltered. However, the CCD camera spectral response is peaking at 700nm (red band). Post image processing got down to 22.6 magnitude at this band.

I am now working on using more recent catalogues that have surveyed the sky in the infrared in the same sky region. The planet (Brown Dwarf), if it is there in the data, should show up in a specific infrared band as a faint cool body. (see previous posts) Even if a signature is identified, it would be important to look back on infrared catalogue data from 10 to 15 years ago. This would be an advantage for parallax motion. If the calculated shift in motion is at the distance modelled then it is most likely the new planet.

In summary, I'm looking in the same region of sky for a very cool planet in the infrared. (see previous posts for more details)

Eamonn

P.S. I'm giving a presentation of the results at INAM 2015, QUB, Belfast, August 26-28.