New Planet Nine paper just released: arxiv.org/abs/2110.13117
I'm excited about this paper for 3 different reasons (sadly, none of the reasons are that we found P9)
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(1) We developed some sweet new algorithms to link possible transients across the 3 years of the ZTF survey, and they now work well. We could have found any P9 that was detected any 7 times over the 3 years. Ecliptic? Sure. Galactic plane? No big deal. It's a good survey.
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(2) Along with the paper, we released a full Planet Nine reference population, statistically drawn from the samples of our previous paper, and used it to understand how much parameter space the ZTF survey ruled out doi.org/10.22002/D1.20
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(2.1) ZTF, amazingly, ruled out 56% of parameter space for P9. Pretty much everything brighter than ~20.7 would have been detected except for a few spots in the south. Also the southern galactic plane. Ugh the southern galactic plane.
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(3) But also exciting is that with this reference population, anyone can download the data, see where the predictions put P9, see which parts of parameter space need searching.
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(3.1) Have a telescope? Doing a survey? This will help guide you to where the predictions say P9 should be hiding and tell you if you are going deep enough (or too deep bless you and your huge glass).
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(end) I like this paper a lot and think the algorithms and reference population will be very helpful for the search. So use them. There is still 46% of parameter space left to go, but we are closing in. Let's go.
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