The dwarf planet candidate, called ED138, appeared in telescope images and takes roughly 280 years to orbit the sun. Astronomers need to determine its size to properly classify it

November 12, 2026 12:00 p.m.

The new dwarf planet candidate, called 2026 ED138, orbits on a plane tiled nearly 25 degrees compared to our solar system's main planets, suggesting it was disturbed by gravitational interactions with Neptune. NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/R. Proctor Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) Orbit data provided by the IAU Minor Planet Center (MPCorb catalog), funded by NASA PDCO and the Tamkin Foundation. Gaia DR2: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Matthew Holman , a senior astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, was sifting through data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile when something odd caught his eye.…