A Strange Orbiting Object

What is 200 kilometers in diameter, located outside the plane of the solar system, and orbits the sun is a direction opposed to everything else in the solar system? Your guess is really as good as anyone else's at this point since scientists are baffled.

This trans-Neptunian object (TNO) is the subject of a New Scientist article that reports on recent findings from the Pan-STARRS 1 Outer Solar System Survey.  The paper associated with this discovery (titled "Discovery of A New Retrograde Trans-Neptunian Object: Hint of A Common Orbital Plane for Low Semi-Major Axis, High Inclination TNOs and Centaurs") labels the newly discovered NTO "Niku" (Chinese for "rebellious").

The article goes on to ponder the cause, be be it billiards among the planets or the mysterious Planet Nine. Just a quick hint - Planet Nine is not a suspect.

It seems we have plenty more to discover about our neighborhood. Who says there's nothing new under the sun (or orbiting it)?

Great Images: Death of a Star

This computer-generated image from NASA shows the death of a red giant as it is consumed by a black hole (PS1-10jh) located 2 billion light-years from Earth.  The destruction was captured in 2010 by NASA's orbiting Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and the ground-based Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii.

More on GALEX:  GALEX is an orbiting space telescope observing galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. Launched into orbit on April 28th, 2003 and originally planned as a 29-month mission, its mission lifetime was extended. 

GALEX’s observations are telling scientists how galaxies, the basic structures of our Universe, evolve and change. Additionally, GALEX observations are investigating the causes of star formation during a period when most of the stars and elements we see today had their origins.

Led by the California Institute of Technology, GALEX is conducting several first-of-a-kind sky surveys, including an extra-galactic (beyond our galaxy) ultraviolet all-sky survey. During its mission GALEX will produce the first comprehensive map of a Universe of galaxies under construction, bringing us closer to understanding how galaxies like our own Milky Way were formed.

More on Pan-STARRS:  The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System is a wide-field imaging facility developed at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. The combination of relatively small mirrors with very large digital cameras results in an economical observing system that can observe the entire available sky several times each month. The prototype single-mirror telescope PS1 is now operational on Mount Haleakala; its scientific research program is being undertaken by the PS1 Science Consortium - a collaboration between ten research organizations in four countries,

A major goal of Pan-STARRS is to discover and characterize Earth-approaching objects, both asteroids and comets, that might pose a danger to our planet.  Its vast database is also ideal for research in several other astronomical areas, particularly those which involve an aspect of time variability.