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arkt8 t1_jd5a1wz wrote

  1. beyond Pluto would be very difficult to spot even a big gas giant like Jupiter, as at such distance the translation and the movement across sky is very small to be perceived casually.

  2. In the outer Pluto orbit the orbital excentricity may be very pronounced. Imagine that such planet could be anywere, not only in the ecliptic (zodiac area).

  3. Excentricity also can put is much distant place for hundred of years.

  4. Also the brightness would be smaller than 13rd magnitude, ie. beyond most of amateur telescopes.

So I'm not so confident that we had found anything on the outer solar system. While we had much tech advance on Astronomy, we are still very limited to find things if not by accident.

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sifuyee t1_jd5i16y wrote

THIS. It's a BIG search area because things are further away from each other that far out and thus the gravity perturbations on the other planets and small bodies is small. Small effect means we only know the general area it's in. Couple that with the dim lighting that far away from the sun and it means you have to stare for a long time to see the dim objects, and thus it takes longer to search that part of the sky with enough sensitivity to see things this dim.

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