Planets

>. Our solar system is infinitesimally smaller
You know this means it's not smaller at all, right?

We have two methods of finding exoplanets.

1: transit photometry: look at a star. if it becomes slightly darker, then brighter we know a planet is moving in front of it and blocking our view. the darker the star gets, the bigger the planet. also, it's much harder for red giants, as they just naturally become brighter and darker anyways.

2: doppler spectroscopy. look at a star. if it becomes slightly bluer and redder (blue-shifted and red-shifted, in a process known as a the doppler effect) we know there is a planet orbiting the star.

now, all of these methods are possibly because stars produce light, and are easily visible, so long as they are not *too* faint, and Kepler-90, despite being 2500 light years away, is still an entire star, and stars are bright, yo.

Kepler-90 has an apparent magnitude (how bright it is. the lower the apparent magnitude, the brighter it is. the system is also logarithmic, so 8 is a several times more than 9) 14.

That isn't much, but for reference Pluto has an apparent magnitude of 13.65. Easily detectable using telescopes, and using special instruments you could easily measure a brightness drop of only a few tenths of a percent.

This takes us to Planet 9. If it exists, because of how far away it would be, it would be stupidly dark, with an estimated apparent magnitude of about 22.5 If you wanted to see it, you would have to look directly at it, and even then you would have to take a long exposure. But if we don't know where it is, let alone if it even exists, how are we supposed to do that? Our only evidence for planet x is that a few objects outside of orbit of neptune have really weird orbits, and that there's a low chance that forming naturally.

how are you supposed to figure out where a planet is just by the orbits of a few really far away objects? well it's pretty fucking hard. so if we want to figure out where to look for planet x, we're gonna need to get all that out of the way first.

exceedingly smaller means not smaller?

your answer is how you turn people off to science and why NASA and NPR and the EPA always have a hard time keeping their budgets, and why the religious have such a stronghold over the populace and our government.

on the other hand, actually answers the q without being an anger-filled douchemonger.

got it. makes sense. thanks.

Infinitesimally is an antonym of exceedingly m8

I know I went a bit far, but the problem is that OP was just coming off as a bit pretentious, while having no knowledge about exoplanets.

fucking talk to the crowd then, you act like a 12y old

>This makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense. All exoplanets are close to their star. Planet 9, if it exists at all, is very far away from our star.

OP here. how so? clearly i have no knowledge of exoplanets and that's why I asked. Where is the pretense?

you are the reason people hate science. go die somewhere.