Discoveries Brown is credited by the
Minor Planet Center with the discovery or co-discovery of 29
minor planets, not counting Haumea
(see list below).
Sedna, a
dwarf planet thought to be the first observed body of the inner
Öpik–Oort cloud; and
Orcus. Brown's team initially referred to
Eris and its moon
Dysnomia with the informal names
Xena and
Gabrielle, respectively, after the two main characters of
Xena: Warrior Princess. Together with
Jean-Luc Margot in 2001, he also discovered
Romulus and
Linus, two
minor-planet moons in the
asteroid belt.
List of minor-planet discoveries }
Haumea controversy Brown and his team also had been observing the dwarf planet for approximately six months before its announced discovery by
José Luis Ortiz Moreno and colleagues from the
Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain. Brown originally indicated his support for Ortiz's team's being given credit for the discovery of
Haumea. However, further investigation showed that a website containing archives of where the telescopes of Brown's team had been pointed while tracking Haumea had been accessed eight times in the three days preceding Ortiz's announcement, by computers with
IP addresses that were traced back to the website of the
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (
CSIC, Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia), where Ortiz works, and to e-mail messages sent by Ortiz and his student. These website accesses came a week after Brown had published an abstract for an upcoming conference talk at which he had planned to announce the discovery of Haumea; the abstract referred to Haumea by a code that was the same code used in the online telescope logs; and the Andalusia computers had accessed the logs containing that code directly, as would be the case after an internet search, without going through the home page or other pages of the archives. When asked about this online activity, Ortiz responded with an email to Brown that suggested Brown was at fault for "hiding objects", and said that "the only reason why we are now exchanging e-mail is because you did not report your object." Brown says that this statement by Ortiz contradicts the accepted scientific practice of analyzing one's research until one is satisfied that it is accurate, then submitting it to
peer review prior to any public announcement. However, the
Minor Planet Center only needs precise enough orbit determination on the object in order to provide discovery credit, which Ortiz provided (see
Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons to verify typical time scale of observation and publication of discoveries). The then director of the IAA, José Carlos del Toro, distanced himself from Ortiz, insisting that its researchers have "sole responsibility" for themselves. Brown petitioned the
International Astronomical Union to credit his team rather than Ortiz as the discoverers of Haumea. The IAU has deliberately not acknowledged a discoverer of Haumea. The discovery date and location are listed as March 7, 2003, at Ortiz's Sierra Nevada Observatory. However, the IAU accepted Brown's suggested name of Haumea, which fit the names of Haumea's two moons, rather than Ortiz's
Ataecina. Proposed ninth planet In January 2016, Brown and fellow Caltech astronomer,
Konstantin Batygin, proposed the existence of
Planet Nine, a major planet between the size of Earth and Neptune. The two astronomers gave a recorded interview in which they described their method and reasoning for proposing Planet 9 on January 20, 2016.
Other work In 2010 Brown published a memoir of his discoveries and surrounding family life,
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. == Honors, awards and accolades ==