#dwarf planet sedna

[cyanogen-miasma]

Oh boy Sedna (she/her and it/its)

I've always liked Sedna the most out of the dwarf planet candidates. I don't know if this is just nostalgia due to the fact that my childhood space encyclopedia specifically used Sedna as an example of a dwarf planet alongside Pluto, complete with a pretty artist's impression - we don't even know that much about Sedna. But perhaps that's the charm! Sedna is a complete enigma - we can't even estimate its mass to the same degree of accuracy as the other dwarf planets because it doesn't have any moons. Not to mention its crazy orbit, we still don't know why it's so eccentric. In fact Sedna's orbit is one of the main hypotheses for the existence of Planet 9, as it and the group of KBOs it gives its name to - the sednoids - have orbits so eccentric and distant that they cannot be explained by the gravitational disturbance of any existing planet. Very interesting stuff.

Sedna's 'lore' of sorts, is quite dependent on the Planet 9 hypothesis proving to be real. It would find Planet 9 in the depths of the Oort Cloud, growing themself by devouring comets en masse. Sedna is sworn to secrecy under the threat of being devoured herself - as Planet 9 is basically in exile and doesn't want the rest of the Solar System to know they're still alive (one form of speculation about planet 9 is that it's either an ice giant or super-earth - not a consensus but both categories can be in the predicted size range for planet 9, in fact it could be both, ie, originally an ice giant but reduced to its rocky core, that would be cool - that was ejected from the main solar system by Jupiter's gravity) - but the weight of the secret is heavy, and Sedna becomes very wary and anxious as a result. Of course, if Planet 9 is not real (we'll know soon enough), then this is all inaccurate...I don't know if I'd get rid of it, considering it's a fun villain idea, but I do like this story to be in line with current knowledge. It depends on what the explanation of the sednoids' orbits turns out to be. Maybe I could bring in Nemesis instead, which is another hypothetical object which could've caused the orbits. Basically, the hypothesis is that another star (Nemesis) passed close by the solar system in early days (or is secretly orbiting the Sun at a distance) and threw the sednoids out of wack. This is much less likely, as a star should have had more effects than just the sednoids' wacky orbit, and the fact that stars are generally much easier to observe...

I don't know :(

Anyway, Sedna is a bit of a nervous wreck, but it tries to pull itself together to do brave things. She's used to being lonely, and is alarmed by lots of noise. She's very practical and doesn't have a lot of patience for niceties.

I love it it's so silly

some articles about planet 9 (there is some new hype now that the Rubin observatory is getting opened)

https://www.astronomy.com/science/new-evidence-builds-case-planet-nine/

https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-of-a-real-ninth-planet/

next up we'll be going back to Cis-Neptunian space and starting Saturn's moons, with Titan

[solarballorama]

WHOOOA CHAPTER 4 START! That two week break did wonders, I'm excited to be back on the grind!!

(START | PREV | NEXT)

[jasper-pagan-witch]

*Pluto not included because it would skew the vote, Pluto will feature in a future poll.

[sparklersunstatic2003]

human sedna! (solarballs)

i drew this on november 14-15!!! (depending on ur timezone) this was 4 sednas discovery anniversary

this is my version of sedna from my dumb au :D hope u enjoy!!!

edit: and here r some versions of the drawing!

[bed-wed-behead-your-fave]

Sedna the Dwarf Planet - from our solar system

[wilding-taphophile]

Listen, I get it if you like Pluto and want it to be a planet-it is classified as a dwarf planet but who cares about classification? Pluto can be a planet if you want. What makes me mad is that nobody ever wants to include the other dwarf planets!

I love you Pluto!

I love you Ceres!

I love you Eris!

I love you Haumea!

I love you Makemake!

I love you Quaoar and Sedna and Orcus and Gonggong!!!!

And you know, if Pluto isn't a planet, if he doesn't get to sit at the big planet's table, I think he is still in excellent company

[occatorcreator]

Sedna or Dysnomia?

Here’s Sedna! I picture her as an adventurous planet

[factoidfactory]

Random Fact #6,610

The dwarf planet Sedna has one of the most elongated and distant orbits in the solar system.

At its furthest point (aphelion), it is about 937 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, making it over 30 times farther from the sun than Neptune.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Outer Planet Astrology 6 November Week

I’m going to try doing this again - it’s nice to do a bit of writing and follow the aspects of my favourite dwarf planets. 

I don’t follow Pluto because while it’s pretty much the same as Eris in size - it’s covered by a lot more people. However it’s really active in the energies of other Dwarf planets this week. It’s a very Plutonian battle for survival kind of week, so lets get into it. 

Eris 

Eris is very much in its retrograde and this is interesting because it’s also conjunct the North Node - the speed of the two points are roughly the same and they’ve been within a 1 degree conjunction since 29 August and will remain so until 14 December. The way these two points have lined up to keep this going is pretty rare - the closest I can see to this was in 1968. 

Eris can often be about standing your ground and fighting for your space, and conjunct the North Node it will be aiming for that survival. This time round that came to a fore when Mars opposed Eris and Hamas attacked Israel sparking off Israel’s brutal reprisals. Last time round, when Mars trined Eris the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia.

So we have real fight or die energy present and on Saturday the Moon will oppose this. We may be looking at emotional exhaustion and an attempt to balance the high energies we’ve had over the past month.  

Sedna

Sedna is on a slow retrograde. It starts the week just ten minutes into Gemini and by the end, it’s 6 minutes into Gemini.Sedna will re-enter Taurus this month - a sign it’s been in since 1965 and only just left. 

On Wednesday, Sedna will have an exact trine with Venus. There’s also a less exact trine to Pluto, making this a grand trine. This feels to me like an opportunity to interrogate values - why you hold them and whether they serve you. Added to all this, there’s a close square between Saturn and Sedna. Which makes me think we’re not just interrogating our values, we’re jettisoning some of them. The bad end of this could be getting rid of your moral code. The positive is very similar - how many scruples do we hold that aren’t healthy? Can we get rid of them?

On Thursday the Moon will meet Venus. This could make things more emotional, if this whole thing shows up in your chart. This could be a useful time to consider things but on Friday Mercury is opposite Sedna. This could create a situation where people let their ethics get in the way of doing the right thing. Excluding people for being immoral when they might need us. Offering the enemy no quarter when we may actually need to come to a compromise.

Orcus 

Orcus is sextile the Sun for the end of the week, becoming exact next Sunday. The Sun is at 16 degrees of Virgo. This may be a time to get lost in your thoughts and interests, if you’re susceptible to this aspect and feel like indulging. Or if you can’t avoid doing so. 

Gonggong

Gonggong closely opposes Lilith all week. Lilith in Virgo is such an odd symbol - the Virgo is the Virgin, and Lilith is the OG monster fucker. I feel that Lilith in Virgo is Lilith throwing itself into doing the right thing so deeply that it loses itself a bit. Or rejects it entirely. This may be morals, but it could also be self care: having a twenty part skin care regime or saying fuck it and buying some cigarettes. 

Gonggong is a planet of revelations currently swimming in emotional Pisces at 4 degrees. If this interacts with your chart it may emerge as a realisation on what you can and can’t manage. It may be a time when you flip between too much dieting and self-care, and not enough. Or vice versa. 

Haumea

Haumea is trine Saturn within 1 degree - Haumea, an egg shaped world of growth and expansion, is at zero degrees of Capricorn. On Saturday, it trines Saturn in Pisces. This sounds quite nice, a chance to reduce your expectations for growth and live within your means. Something we maybe need at the moment. Haumea is square to Pluto all of this time, which feels honestly awkward because that means it’s semisextile Saturn. Haumea may have a sense of expand or die, while Pluto absolutely can’t see why Saturn is trying to put on the breaks. 

The Outer Planets Weather

The key concept for the week seems to be values - are they good? Even if they are, can we afford them? Eris and the North Node gives us a sense that now is the time to push forward if we want to be able to hold our ground. However, this has been going on for an age and this week offers some chances to step back and reconsider. Or be exhausted and give up. Consider your options carefully

[usagi-zakura]

Planet-noodles?

Planet-noodles!

They have no legs because they don't need those in space where there is no ground...they are ground. (At least some of them are...some are gas)

[smolfroglesbian]

I just saw a pick your favorite planet poll, so here's a pick your favorite dwarf planet poll!

Reblog so other people can vote their favorite little space rock!

[letzgetsilly]

Based on: https://x.com/punkittdev/status/1609123278878314496?s=46&t=eh1r9dqvCJ5Qp5z4NFX0Lg

[cyanogen-miasma]

some little sketches of the other dwarf planets and dwarf planet candidates

'candidates' sounds like they've got to fight each other to the death and whoever wins gets to be a dwarf planet lmao

from left-to-right and top-to-bottom, we have: Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, Sedna

I'm not going to waffle over the designs as I want to keep all the commentary for their proper introductory posts

you won't have to wait long for Haumea because they are currently a WIP

I'm a bit worried about colours for Gonggong onwards because they don't really have any close-up pictures; technically Eris, Haumea and Makemake don't either, at least as far as I can see, but I used NASA's 3D models for them...I can't seem to find one for the others, unfortunately, so basically I have to make up the colours myself. I know, generally what colour they are - Gonggong, Quaoar and Sedna are red, and Orcus is grey - but I have no real reference to use :(

As you can see, the jury is still out on whether Salacia is going to feature in this group

[rapscallion-rumble]

Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Quaoar, Sedna, Gonggong, Ceres, Salacia, Orcus, and Pluto

[yesthatsatumbler]

One surprisingly common problem with many proposed definitions of planets (even the IAU ones! at least if they're taken sufficiently literally) is that, oops, it turns out it's actually unexpectedly easy to accidentally make Mercury not qualify as a planet? And we don't really want that because it's obviously planet-like in many ways even though it's really kinda small compared to the other seven obviously-planets (indeed smaller than two of the gas giant moons, which we usually don't want to accidentally count as planets).

It also turns out (this might be surprising to some of you who hadn't followed the "is Pluto a planet" dispute in the last few years) that Pluto is actually the largest Kuiper Belt object! There's been a lot of estimates saying that Eris is larger, but now that we have sufficiently narrow diameter estimates for both, it turns out that Pluto is actually larger... by about two percent. (2376 km diameter for Pluto, 2330ish for Eris - the latter is usually given as 2326 but the error bars reach into the third significant figure.) The confusion is because Eris is more massive (by over 20%), so before astronomers could do a direct diameter estimate with a lucky occultation, they had to work with mass-based estimates (based on the orbit of its satellite, IIRC) and those gave (expectedly) larger figures. Turns out it's actually slightly smaller, just significantly denser.

It probably also doesn't help that the true number of planets-including-dwarf-planets might be extremely hard to estimate, and in particular that there are likely to be other dwarf planets that are not currently known to Terran astronomers. One of the best dwarf planet candidates is 90377 Sedna, which is currently near perihelion on an orbit that takes it up to 10 times farther from the Sun; an object of the same (or even slightly larger) size that was closer to aphelion on a similar (or even more elliptical) orbit would probably not have been found. There could easily be a dozen, or more, other similar dwarf planets that hadn't been discovered yet because they're currently too far.

...I wonder when I'll see the first take for "there are 10 planets" (the traditional 9 + Eris). It certainly seems valid enough given current knowledge about the Solar System! Of course that assumes there are no Eris-alikes lurking out at 800 AU...

I've noticed something I find somewhat concerning and it's that for a lot of people, 'pluto is a planet' has fallen into the stock list of examples for what one might call 'science denialism', along with things like antivaxx, denying the existence of feathered (non-avian) dinosaurs, and flat earthers

there's a sentiment that goes like 'well, sure, you learned in school that the solar system has nine planets, but Science Marches On and we now know it has eight' and while certainly people should not take what they learned in school to be immutable law they should also like. have a concept of the rather significant difference between 'we've learned something new about the world' and 'we've decided to slice up the world in categories along different lines'

slicing up the world into categories is one of the basic operations of human thought and if you do not understand it well enough that you think 'people used to think the earth flat -> now we know better' and 'astronomers used to call pluto a planet -> now they don't' are analogous processes then you fucked up somewhere.

and if you don't think they are analogous, if you understand the difference i am pointing out and think it does not matter to the quest of listing stock examples of people disagreeing with things scientists say, well. you fucked up in a different place, probably.