Curious about the new dwarf planet 2014 UZ224 ("DeeDee")? Check Fact Sheet!

Curious about the new dwarf planet 2014 UZ224 ("DeeDee")? Check Fact Sheet!

DeeDee is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) that was first discovered by a team of astronomers including NOAO astronomers Alistair Walker and Tim Abbott, led by Dr. David Gerdes, from the University of Michigan and lead author of the paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Gerdes was using the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile for the Dark Energy Survey, which gave astronomers an extraordinary number of images. While most of those photos turned out to be distant galaxies, some showed signs of TNOs, and of that small amount of TNO photos, 12 photos were of DeeDee, which is short for Distant Dwarf.

DeeDee is the second farthest known TNO in the outskirts of the Kuiper Belt with a confirmed orbit, but otherwise not much was known about it until recently.

Dr. David Gerdes Fact Sheet here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gerdes/2014_UZ224.html

Astronomers collected some amazing details about DeeDee using the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and just recently released the information, including that it is about 635 kilometers (394 miles) across and that its mass means it should be spherical, which puts it in the running to become a dwarf planet. Read more in the NRAO Press Release https://public.nrao.edu/news/2017-alma-investigates-deedee/

Summary: 
Artist Interpretation of DeeDee. Credit: Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)DeeDee is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) that was first discovered by a team of astronomers including NOAO astronomers Alistair Walker and Tim Abbott, led by Dr. David Gerdes, from the University of Michigan and lead author of the paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Gerdes was using the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile for the Dark Energy Survey, which gave astronomers an extraordinary number of images. While most of those photos turned out to be distant galaxies, some showed signs of TNOs, and of that small amount of TNO photos, 12 photos were of DeeDee, which is short for Distant Dwarf.