A collaborative research group led by Kyoto University is extremely small, estimated to be the survivor of the oldest primordial celestial body "planetesimal" in the solar system at the end of the solar system by observation using an ultra-low cost small telescope installed on Miyakojima. For the first time in history, we succeeded in discovering a celestial body of a size.
Planetesimals in the solar system, including the Earth, are thought to have grown to their current size through repeated collisions and coalescence of small celestial bodies "planetesimals" with a radius of about 1-10 km, which existed in large numbers at the time of the birth of the solar system.Some of these planetesimals have been left behind from the growth process and are still predicted to survive in the "Edgeworth Kuiper Belt" (hereinafter referred to as "Kuiper Belt") at the end of the solar system far from Neptune.However, the tiny Kuiper belt object was so dark that it could not be observed directly with a state-of-the-art telescope, so it has never been discovered.
This time, the group is a small primordial project at the end of the solar system, which is an exceptionally small and ultra-low-budget project in the field of modern observational astronomy, but due to the accumulation of researchers' ideas, even a giant telescope was completely inconvenient. The discovery of a celestial body was successful for the first time in history.
This discovery is the first observation that suggests that small-sized primordial objects have survived in large numbers at the ends of the present solar system, and that they are the origin of comets. It is expected that questions such as "What is at the end of it?" Will become clear.
Paper information:[Nature Astronomy] A kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object discovered by stellar occultation using amateur telescopes
