"Des" project found a total of 316 Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO), 139 of which never discovered before.

6 years of observations and 11 billions of "points" analyzed. At the beginning the project "DES" (Dark Energy Survey) has been projected to study the dark matter observing very far galaxies and supernovae. It covered approximately 5000 degrees of Southern Sky.

What are TNOs?

A TNO, Trans-Neptunian Object, is an asteroid or a dwarf planet orbiting over the Neptune orbit, in the Kuiper's Belt, most of the time in a 2:3 orbital resonance: the most known object in this condition is, obviously, Pluto. The orbital resonance is a particular phenomenon for which the orbital period of two objects is expressed with fractions: 2/3, 1/1, 1/2, 3/4... (a particular resonance 1:2:4, called Laplace resonance, includes Io, Europa and Ganimede, Jupiter's moons). Sometimes happens that some of this objects intersect Neptune orbit, passing through it: because of orbital resonance, they never collide with Neptune, or been captured by it.

How did they discover them?

Kepler's 2nd law is clear: farther an object from its host star, longer its revolution. It's physics! Also it's clear that it's impossible realize the motion of this object in few hours. It's easier noticing it during days! And so they did.

A first analysis, deleting all those points that didn't move in 5 days, the biggest part of that 7 billions point. Another 25 days period to identify only 316 points moving appreciably. 139 of them has been never observed before and they are not included in any catalog listing this kind of objects. This can give you an idea about the needed work behind a new discover: billions of points to analyze to find a 0,00000.... that takes you to the Olympus! The discover of Pluto has been possible with the same way! You can read THIS ARTICLE, in which i tell it.

Why is this discover very important?

Since 1930, when we realized Pluto was too small to perturb Neptune's orbit, the "haunting" to the Planet Nine started. It's an hypothetical big planet, having a similar size to Neptune, orbiting very far from the Sun, in the Kuiper's Belt, but its existence it's just an hypothesis. In the last 20 years the discovers of many of these objects made this much more than an hypothesis.

Do you wanna try to get to the Olympus? 

See you next time