> we are discovering exoplanets left and right. Why is it so order in our own backyard?

Discovering exoplanets is sort of like seeing distant mountains, we can spot them because they're "easy" to find by just looking for dips in light from their respective stars.

Discovering a planet near us is like being able to identify a small pebble from far away because we can't use the same methods we use to find exoplanets, so we're just blindly looking into space trying to see if one of the millions of little dots we can see moves like a planet would.

I am curious about the micro rover with the second mission. That sounds neat.

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1. beyond Pluto would be very difficult to spot even a big gas giant like Jupiter, as at such distance the translation and the movement across sky is very small to be perceived casually.

2. In the outer Pluto orbit the orbital excentricity may be very pronounced. Imagine that such planet could be anywere, not only in the ecliptic (zodiac area).

3. Excentricity also can put is much distant place for hundred of years.

4. Also the brightness would be smaller than 13rd magnitude, ie. beyond most of amateur telescopes.

So I'm not so confident that we had found anything on the outer solar system. While we had much tech advance on Astronomy, we are still very limited to find things if not by accident.

Batygin and Brown hypothesised a Neptune-mass object orbiting on a highly eccentric 10,000 - 15,000 year orbit as a solution to an observed "shepherding" of Kuiper belt object orbits (because they observed what looked like a lopsided distribution in their orientations).

As for why it hasn't been observed, if it exists, is that the region it would be in its orbit is huge, as in, dwarfing most of the solar system. That far out, from the planet's perspective the sun would be nearly indistinguishable from other stars, so the planet would be very, very cold and have next to no reflected light.

So you'd be looking for a black needle in a gigantic dark haystack who's only clues about where it is is based off of how other needles you've found have been distributed in the gigantic haystack.

When we find exoplanets, its largely because they blot out the light of their parent star, or in the case of particularly massive planets, they can make their host star wiggle.
With the hypothetical planet 9, we have no host star to helpfully observe and watch for an occultation.

We discover exoplanets because they are little black dots in front of a giant field of light.

Finding another planet past Neptune would be looking for a tiny black dot in front of a giant field of black.

Sure it’s a gigantic area, but my logic was that we are discovering exoplanets left and right. Why is it so harder in our own backyard?

>Neptune orbits our Sun, a star, and is the eighth planet from the Sun at a distance of about 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers).

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>In 2011 Neptune completed its first 165-year orbit since its discovery in 1846.

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where to look?

when do we look there?

You mean planet X I guess, there's evidence for it based on the way other objects are having their orbits affected, but we haven't actually observed it. Sounds kind of funny to say, but there's a lot of dust in that part of space, it's hard to see anything there.

At this point, the answer is "probably not".

There's been a bunch of math and predictions to indicate there might be, it's possible, but every time someone says they've figured out where it is, where it should be, it.... isn't.

At this point, it's hard to imagine missing anything significant, or at least, anything significant that reflects light, like a planet would.

A small, stellar black hole, however, could easily remain undetected directly while still showing up regularly and frustratingly in our math. Is it likely? No, not at all. But it's possible, and that's fun, the idea that we might have a black hole orbiting our sun beyond Neptune is a fun one.

Its theorized based on some math, but also space is big and difficult.

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It’s possible, but we’ve yet to directly detect anything. Out beyond Neptune is a vast and dark amount of space. Finding even large planets out that far would be difficult with our current technology.

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I, for one, welcome our new Japanese Moon Overlords.

That's still a poor comparison.

I hope you understand that us (modern humans), neanderthals and homo erectus, during the cavemen era, none contributed to science. Not because they didn't want to, but because they didn't have enough time.

It took modern humans from cavemen times to 1700 C.E., for someone to come up with calculus. Neanderthals and Homo Erectus didn't have that time, not to mention, Homo Erectus was much less intelligent than us.

No, it's whether they even want to.

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ispace is fuckin awesome. I've had great conversations with some of the people there - they are not fucking around. On their development timeline, this landing is important, but they've been working on tech for the future missions for the last couple years already. Batteries are a big item for their long-term plan, which isn't just landing. Once it can land reliably and its rover batteries can survive lunar night, this becomes a science platform that gives lunar access to any paying customer. The Moon economy is about to break wide open, and ispace will be the ones to cut the ribbon, I'm sure of it.

This is good stuff, the more people / countries in the race, the sooner we with have people living on it.

Did you mix me up with someone else?

I gave my opinion and you’ve given yours. Why can’t you just let it go.

Too bad. I’m certain Space X will do fine anyway

You are being more than a little bit ridiculous here. Do you honestly believe that anyone in this thread claimed or implied that Musk is a god emperor? The comment you replied to said that Musk has contributed massively, which you now agree with. Does that mean that you too are "pretending that he’s a god emperor"? Obviously not. Try to be honest.

You started out with some false claims about Musk's contributions at SpaceX. Multiple people have given you calm and polite replies explaining why your claims are false. It is okay to admit that you were wrong. It is okay to acknowledge someone's contributions even if you dislike them.

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