Our solar system may have a brand new dwarf planet, orbiting in the region beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt.

Called 2014 UZ224, the object is said to be around 330 miles (530km) across and has been spotted around 8.5 billion miles (13.7 billion km) from the Sun.


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If confirmed as a dwarf planet, it will join the most famous dwarf planet in our system, Pluto, as well as Eris, Haumea, Ceres and the more recently discovered Makemake. 2014 UZ224 is the third most distant object in our system, behind Eris, and V774104, discovered in October.

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Professor David Gerdes from the University of Michigan told NPR that 2014 UZ224 was found using what's known as the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

This camera captures images of the sky at regular intervals and while galaxies stay in a static position, orbiting objects change their position and this was used to discover 2014 UZ224. It then took two years to repeat the findings and confirm its discovery.

An artist's concept shows the distant dwarf planet Makemake and its newly discovered moon NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute)

2014 UZ224 has a 1,140-year orbit. According to Sky & Telescope, astronomers don't consider it part of the "classical Kuiper Belt" and instead is being referred to as a "scattered disk object" whose orbits has changed "due to encounters with Neptune".


Professor Gerdes has since used the ALMA radio-telescope array to measure heat from 2014 UZ224. This data will be combined with the optical measurements to determine a more accurate size for the object.

The object has been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Minor Planet Center, but its orbital path is not yet known and Professor Gerdes said the IAU will need to officially classify it once more details are known about its size.