An artist’s conception of a distant Solar System Planet X.

(Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)

At a Glance

The dwarf planet was discovered in 2015, but wasn't unveiled until this week. The icy world is just 186 miles across and takes 40,000 years to circle the sun.

A tiny dwarf planet nicknamed "the Goblin"has been spotted orbiting the far reaches of our solar system.

The dwarf planet, formally TG387,was discovered in 2015around Halloween (hence the spooky nickname), but wasn't unveiled untilthis week, after three years of observations.

It took that long to pin down the planet's orbit, with help from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the Discovery Channel Telescope in Arizona.

The icy world is just186 miles across andtakes 40,000 yearsto circle the sun. It's2,300 times farther from the sun than Earth at its most distant orbit.

For perspective, the Goblin is "two and a half times further away from the Sun than Pluto is right now," according to the .

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"These objects are on elongated orbits, and we can only detect them when they are closest to the Sun,"Scott Sheppard, one of the astronomers who made the discovery, told the Associated Press in an email."For some 99 percent of their orbits, they are too distant and thus too faint for us to observe them. We are only seeing the tip of the ice berg.”

Discovery images of 2015 TG387 taken three hours apart.

(Scott Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the discovery is the possible implication that a more massive Planet X or Planet Nine exists, vastly more remote than even the Goblin.

The discovery gives further credence to the hypothesis that Planet X, which could be 10 times the size of Earth, could be influencing the orbits of objects like 2015 TG387 within the Kuiper Belt.

A comparison of 2015 TG387 at 65 AU with the Solar System’s known planets.

(Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)