Astronomers Report 10th Planet Far Beyond Pluto

"It is bigger than Pluto!!!"

Astronomer Michael Brown of Cal Tech wrote at his website.

"And it's not planetoid 2003EL61 announced yesterday,"

also by Brown's group.

Tenth planet, 2003UB313, photographed above in the white circle by Palomar Observatory astronomers lead by Michael Brown, Ph.D., from CalTech, was discovered for the first time on January 8, 2005, at Palomar Observatory's Samuel Oschin telescope which took this image.

July 30, 2005 Pasadena, California - Brown had hoped to confirm the object's size before public disclosure. But late last night at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, he made a rushed announcement after his astronomy team, including Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory), and David Rabinowitz (Yale University), learned that a hacker had broken into their data with the idea of making "the tenth planet" discovery public first. Beyond 2003UB313, it has no other name yet, but a "more melodious name" was submitted to the International Astronomical Union in Paris for approval. It might have "Lila" in it, since Michael Brown has a 3-week-old daughter named Lila.

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