Rubin’s New Dwarf Planet & Neptune’s Trojan Asteroid: Discoveries on the Solar System’s Edge

Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries · Nov 5, 2026 · 30m · transcript

Space Nuts: A New Dwarf Planet, 3I/ATLAS, and Neptune’s Hidden Trojans

In this episode of Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson explore three discoveries from across the Solar System and beyond. They begin with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s discovery of a distant, potentially large dwarf planet, and discuss what its unusual orbit could tell us about the hunt for the elusive Planet Nine. Next, they examine new James Webb Space Telescope observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, whose unusual chemistry may preserve clues to its origins in a very cold environment billions of…