Finding Planet Nine: apsidal anti-alignment Monte Carlo results

Abstract

The distribution of the orbital elements of the known extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs has been found to be statistically incompatible with that of an unperturbed asteroid population following heliocentric or, better, barycentric orbits. Such trends, if confirmed by future discoveries of ETNOs, strongly suggest that one or more massive perturbers could be located well beyond Pluto. Within the trans-Plutonian planets paradigm, the Planet Nine hypothesis has received much attention as a robust scenario to explain the observed clustering in physical space of the perihelia of seven ETNOs which also exhibit clustering in orbital pole position. Here, we revisit the subject of clustering in perihelia and poles of the known ETNOs using barycentric orbits, and study the visibility of the latest incarnation of the orbit of Planet Nine applying Monte Carlo techniques and focusing on the effects of the apsidal anti-alignment constraint. We provide visibility maps indicating the most likely location of this putative planet if it is near aphelion. We also show that the available data suggest that at least two massive perturbers are present beyond Pluto.

7 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables. Revised to match version published in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• The Planet Nine Hypothesis
• Consequences of a Distant Massive Planet on the Large Semi-major Axis Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Searching for Planet Nine with Coadded WISE and NEOWISE-Reactivation Images
• Pole, Pericenter, and Nodes of the Interstellar Minor Body A/2017 U1
• Dynamically correlated minor bodies in the outer Solar system
• Binary stripping as a plausible origin of correlated pairs of extreme trans-Neptunian objects
• Evidence for a possible bimodal distribution of the nodal distances of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects: avoiding a trans-Plutonian planet or just plain bias?
• Peculiar orbits and asymmetries in extreme trans-Neptunian space