NASA 1983 Announcement that Planet X is real
30-Dec-1983**
A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet
Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part
of this solar system has been found in the direction of the
constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S.
infrared astronomical satellite. So mysterious is the object
that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant
comet, a nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough to
become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in
the process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so
shrouded in dust that none of the light cast by its stars
ever gets through. "All I can tell you is that we don't know
what it is," Dr. Gerry Neugebauer, IRAS chief scientist for
California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and director of the
Palomar Observatory for the California Institute of
Technology said in an interview.
The most fascinating explanation of this mystery body, which
is so cold it casts no light and has never been seen by
optical telescopes on Earth or in space, is that it is a
giant gaseous planet, as large as Jupiter and as close to
Earth as 50 billion miles. While that may seem like a great
distance in earthbound terms, it is a stone's throw in
cosmological terms, so close in fact that it would be the
nearest heavenly body to Earth beyond the outermost planet
Pluto. "If it is really that close, it would be a part of
our solar system," said Dr. James Houck of Cornell
University's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research and
a member of the IRAS science team. "If it is that close, I
don't know how the world's planetary scientists would even
begin to classify it."
The mystery body was seen twice by the infrared satellite as
it scanned the northern sky from last January to November,
when the satellite ran out of the supercold helium that
allowed its telescope to see the coldest bodies in the
heavens. The second observation took place six months after
the first and suggested the mystery body had not moved from
its spot in the sky near the western edge of the
constellation Orion in that time. "This suggests it's not a
comet because a comet would not be as large as the one we've
observed and a comet would probably have moved," Houck said.
"A planet may have moved if it were as close as 50 billion
miles but it could still be a more distant planet and not
have moved in six months time.
Whatever it is, Houck said, the mystery body is so cold its
temperature is no more than 40 degrees above "absolute"
zero, which is 459 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The
telescope aboard IRAS is cooled so low and is so sensitive
it can "see" objects in the heavens that are only 20 degrees
above absolute zero. When IRAS scientists first saw the
mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as 50
billion miles, there was some speculation that it might be
moving toward Earth. "It's not incoming mail," Cal Tech's
Neugebauer said. "I want to douse that idea with as much
cold water as I can."
**Date: 12/30/1983
Washington Post
And - from:
US News World Report
Planet X - Is It Really Out There? Sept 10, 1984
Shrouded from the sun's light, mysteriously tugging at the
orbits of Uranus and Neptune, is an unseen force that
astronomers suspect may be Planet X - a 10th resident of the
Earth's celestial neighborhood. Last year, the infrared
astronomical satellite (IRAS), circling in a polar orbit 560
miles from the Earth, detected heat from an object about 50
billion miles away that is now the subject of intense
speculation. "All I can say is that we don't know what it is
yet," says Gerry Neugesbeuer, director of the Palomar
Observatory for the California Institute of Technology.
Scientists are hopeful that the one-way journeys of the
Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes may help to locate the
nameless body."