This Telescope Could Find "Planet 9"

Short Wave

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🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Some scientists are convinced that beyond Neptune, there's a planet they've yet to see. This so-called "Planet 9" is so far away, it would be a faint object. The stretch of sky researchers would have to search is huge. But a new astronomical facility on a mountaintop in Chile could help tackle the search. The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has been under construction for years. Now, scientists are finetuning its instruments so the telescope can begin its 10-year mission of taking images of almost the entire southern sky.

Read more of science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce's reporting here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job.
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0:11.9	and we package them into five-minute episodes,
0:14.3	so you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing.
0:19.5	Listen to the NPR News Now podcast.
0:22.7	Now.
0:24.3	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:30.0	Hey, Shortwaver is Regina Barbara here.
0:32.1	And today we're going to talk about a powerful, highly unusual telescope that's just now starting up.
0:37.8	Most telescopes are designed to point at a particular object in the sky, maybe a certain galaxy
0:42.7	or planet or star, so that astronomers can study it in detail.
0:47.1	Then it moves on to the next galaxy or another star, and it does it all over again.
0:52.0	So that's not what this telescope is doing, right?
0:54.2	Okay, this is a survey telescope.
0:55.9	It means it's almost scanning the entire sky.
0:58.7	Hey, Nell.
0:59.3	Hey.
1:00.1	That's NPR science correspondent Nell-Kreenfield, Boyce, everyone.
1:03.5	She's here to tell us about the awesome power of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
1:07.4	So this thing is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of
1:11.2	Energy, along with other sources. And it's on a mountaintop in Chile, where scientists are currently
	...

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