Why we can accurately detect stars billions of light years away, but we can’t confirm if we have a 9th planet in our solar system?

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Why we can accurately detect stars billions of light years away, but we can’t confirm if we have a 9th planet in our solar system?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Alot of people are explainung the fact that stars are brighter, therefore easier to see. I’ll go one further. We can even detect planets around other stars because of this light. We mostly find planets by measuring the light from a star and seeing if it gets blocked and/or dimmer at a certain rate. By the timing/rate of the dimness of the star at certain points, smart math space science people can determine/estimate how many/what size/how far planets are from their star. We don’t have that advantage looking out from our star in our point of view from inside the same solar system, so we would have to get a direct view of it. We’re stuck measuring gravity fluctuations etc to determine if there’s a ninth planet mainly because there’s no back light to measure against.

Edit:typo

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