Video taking off 21x its usual first day

A crowded star field hid a possible dwarf planet

NOVA follows the Rubin Observatory team's discovery of 2026 ED138, a bright object beyond Pluto whose status still needs confirmation.

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NOVA PBS Official Story of October 28, 2026Trari Newsroom

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Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 749,373 views a day, 21 times a normal first day on this channel (36,228).

New Dwarf Planet Hiding in Our Solar System? | NOVA | PBS

Things we can learn from the video

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0:41Dwarf planet classification explains why discovering an object does not automatically give it the same status as Pluto.
1:23The candidate escaped detection against the dense star field of the Milky Way's galactic plane.
2:45Astronomers connect dots across separate images to determine which observations belong to the same moving object.
3:16Holman explains that orbital physics, rather than AI, underpins the core linking calculations.
3:32The team connects its discovery to archival Blanco Telescope observations dating back to 2016.
5:09The report explains the verification still needed before the candidate can be officially classified as a dwarf planet.

"This object is unusually bright," says Jake Kurlander of the Rubin Solar System Operations Team. So how did astronomers miss it? NOVA's answer is that even a bright object can be hard to pick out against the Milky Way's dense backdrop of stars.

That celestial hiding place is the hook of "New Dwarf Planet Hiding in Our Solar System? | NOVA | PBS," which drew roughly 334,000 views in seven hours, already far beyond the channel's usual full-day audience for regular videos.

The report follows the discovery of 2026 ED138 in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Finding it involves more than spotting a dot. Astronomers have to work out which dots in separate images belong to the same moving object, a puzzle Smithsonian astrophysicist Matthew Holman calls the "linking problem."

There's a useful surprise in the explanation: the core calculations rely on orbital physics, not AI. Once the team connected the observations, it also found the object in older images from the Blanco Telescope. The evidence had been sitting in an archive before anyone recognized what it showed.

The question mark in NOVA's title matters. This is a dwarf planet candidate, not an officially confirmed addition to the group. Dwarf planets orbit the Sun and are massive enough to become roughly round, but have not cleared their orbital neighborhoods.

One viewer recalls a scientist father's habit of trying to disprove a discovery as soon as he made it. That is a fitting companion to NOVA's closing explanation: finding the object and establishing exactly what it is are separate jobs.

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What viewers say

My dad was a scientist, and he would say, "You spend years looking for something, and the minute you find it, you shift to trying to disprove what you think you just found."
@Graybeard_See it on YouTube
"How did we miss this"? The marvel is that we found it. An object that small, moving that slowly in apparent motion, and stuck with the Milky Way as its background is ridiculously difficult to find.
@terrycunningham8118See it on YouTube
Congratulations to this team of scientists. I hope their discovery becomes an official dwarf planet. It was fun to see how excited they are about their discovery and work!
@jeanneblondewomanstamping9788See it on YouTube

2 more comments

I love that we are still discovering things about our relatively near space.🥰
@DjynniSee it on YouTube
I was so happy to see the Roos Roast Lobster Butter sticker from Ann Arbor on the notebook!
@ohprudenceSee it on YouTube

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The facts

Channel: NOVA PBS Official
Subscribers: 1,540,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
Channel views, last 7 days: 325,567
Channel views, pace per day: 274,386 (on a normal day: 283,124)
Video published: October 27, 2026
Video views so far: 333,570 (less than a day online)
Video views, pace per day: 749,373

The numbers

The report has already passed NOVA's usual first-day views for regular videos, with only seven hours online. Its comment section is also much busier than a typical full first day.

the video's first day

usual first day here

36,228

this video

749,373

subscribers

1,540,000

▲ 10,000 in the last 7 days

total views

285,800,936

views per day

274,386