Vera Rubin Observatory discovers dwarf planet candidate beyond Pluto

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has discovered 2026 ED138, a dwarf planet candidate located beyond Pluto’s orbit, with an estimated diameter of up to 1,500 kilometers, according to AstroSpace.it, citing the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union.

The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center and presented at the meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, held in Spokane, in the United States. The scientific announcement confirms the object’s status as a candidate officially registered by the international body responsible for the nomenclature of minor bodies in the Solar System, the same organization that catalogs asteroids, comets and dwarf planets identified by observatories around the world.

If the size estimates were confirmed, 2026 ED138 would rank among the largest and brightest bodies ever identified in this belt of the Solar System, beyond Pluto’s orbit, a region populated by thousands of icy objects known as trans-Neptunian objects. Their observation is made possible by new-generation instruments capable of detecting faint, distant objects, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which recently entered full scientific operation.

The source of the news is currently singular; no further independent confirmations of the object’s size estimates have been reported, which remain tied to the preliminary data released by the Minor Planet Center. Subsequent verifications, based on repeated observations and more precise orbital calculations, will be able to confirm or scale back the current estimates.

The new object thus joins the list of trans-Neptunian bodies monitored by international observatories, with an estimated diameter — up to 1,500 kilometers — that would make it one of the largest discovered so far in this region, on a par with other already catalogued dwarf planets such as Eris, Haumea and Makemake.