Roll over the image to see the movement of Eris during a 24-hour period. Eris is the very dim moving point of light that is roughly halfway between the brightest star and the small galaxy to its lower right.

Classified as a "dwarf planet," Eris is the most distant spherical body yet discovered in our solar system. It is about 9 billion miles away, which is about 3 times as far as Pluto. Its diameter of about1400 miles is roughly the same as Pluto's. As this image shows, it is a very dim target at about magnitude 18.7. For comparison, the brightest star in this field is magnitude 8.3, and the nearby galaxy (PGC 1070544) is magnitude 16.7.

Eris was discovered in 2005, followed in that same year by the discovery of its one known moon, Dysnomia.

Image details:  Each of the two images used exposure times of 24 minutes luminance and 6 minutes each of red, green and blue, taken with an SBIG ST-8300M imager and a 12" Meade telescope at f/10.

September 27-28, 2013