Tales from the transneptunian sea
May 10, 2004
Our knowledge of the outer solar system
has changed dramatically in the last decade
and we now know of several hundred small
bodies that exist there. These objects range
in size from 50 to 2000 km across and have
remarkably diverse orbits. However, none
of these objects have properties that are
as extreme as that of “Sedna”, which was
recently discovered by Mike Brown and co-workers
at the California Institute of Technology
(Caltech). This object is currently
three times further away than Neptune,
making it the most distant body ever observed
in the solar system, but how it got
there is puzzling astronomers.
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