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Title: A 3$$π$$ Search for Planet Nine at 3.4 $$μ$$m with WISE and NEOWISE

Journal Article · · The Astronomical Journal (Online)
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics
  2. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  3. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA (United States)

The recent "Planet Nine" hypothesis has led to many observational and archival searches for this giant planet proposed to orbit the Sun at hundreds of astronomical units. While trans-Neptunian object searches are typically conducted in the optical, models suggest Planet Nine could be self-luminous and potentially bright enough at ~3–5 μm to be detected by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). We have previously demonstrated a Planet Nine search methodology based on time-resolved WISE coadds, allowing us to detect moving objects much fainter than would be possible using single-frame extractions. In the present work, we extend our 3.4 μm (W1) search to cover more than three-quarters of the sky and incorporate four years of WISE observations spanning a seven-year time period. This represents the deepest and widest-area WISE search for Planet Nine to date. We characterize the spatial variation of our survey's sensitivity and rule out the presence of Planet Nine in the parameter space searched at W1 < 16.7 in high Galactic latitude regions (90% completeness).

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1524088
Journal Information:
The Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 155, Issue 4; ISSN 1538-3881
Publisher:
IOP Publishing - AAASCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 9 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine text January 2016
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Generation of Highly Inclined Trans-Neptunian Objects by Planet Nine text January 2016
Constraints on Planet Nine's Orbit and Sky Position within a Framework of Mean Motion Resonances text January 2016
The First Brown Dwarf Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project text January 2017
OSSOS VI. Striking Biases in the detection of large semimajor axis Trans-Neptunian Objects text January 2017
Origin and Evolution of Short-Period Comets text January 2017
Dynamical Evolution Induced by Planet Nine text January 2017
Scenarios for the Origin of the Orbits of the Trans-Neptunian Objects 2000 CR105 and 2003 VB12 text January 2004

Cited By (3)

A new approach to distant solar system object detection in large survey data sets journal July 2018
The Case for a Large-scale Occultation Network journal June 2019
The Case for a Large-Scale Occultation Network text January 2019

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