On 20 January 2016, researchers Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown at Caltech announced a calculation-based evidence of a massive ninth planet in the Solar System.

Planet Nine would be 10 times the mass of Earth (approximately 5,000 times the mass of Pluto), and have an orbit that is so far away that it could take it 15,000 Earth years to orbit the Sun. It would most likely be an ice giant with a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.

However, as Zeljko Ivezic (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project Scientist) suggests “if it exists, might be too small to be discovered with ongoing sky surveys, but large enough to be discovered even with only the first year of LSST data! That would be a great way to start the survey!”

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is providing a scalable, shared model to integrate the work of the geographically dispersed LSST team. Enterprise Architect has delivered complete requirements traceability, round-trip code engineering and detailed SysML support.

Additional Resources:

• Case Study: Designing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with Enterprise Architect - PDF Document

• Download E-Book: 20 Terabytes a Night: Designing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's Image Processing Pipelines - PDF Document
• Official website: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope - Visit Site

Creative Commons Attribution: Planet Nine in Outer Space artistic depiction image by Prokaryotes