Tag: kbo

Planet X

This was inspired by the announcement from Prof Mike Brown that he was on the trail of a new ice giant planet, way, way beyond Pluto.

This was revealled by some unusual allignments on the orbits of several Kuiper Belt objects.

For the art, the challenge was to show something clearly, while giving an impression of almost total darkness. Here’s what I came up with:

Planet X
Artists impressionof the possible giant planet in the far outer solar system.

The rich star background is there to imply a very long exposure.

I gave the planet a ring. While the material that far out is sparse, the planets gravity would be completely dominant, while the influence of the Sun would be tiny. For the same reason, I would expect it to have many small moon’s, (not shown).

Nick