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Other objects, such as 28978 Ixion (discovered in 2001) and 20000 Varuna (discovered in 2000) measure roughly 500 km across. [1] This has led gradually to the acceptance of Pluto as the largest member of the Kuiper belt. [citation needed] The brightest known dwarf planets and other KBOs (with absolute magnitudes < 4.0) are:
This is a list of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which are minor planets in the Solar System that orbit the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune, that is, their orbit has a semi-major axis greater than 30.1 astronomical units (AU). The Kuiper belt, scattered disk, and Oort cloud are three conventional divisions of this volume of ...
While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, [5] Haumea, [6] Quaoar, and Makemake. [7]
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [16] [17] [18] An astronomical unit, or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [19]
All asteroids should be sorted using a 0-padded 6-digit sortkey based on their numerical designation.Otherwise, their provisional designation should be used. For example:
Another subclass of Kuiper belt objects is the so-called scattering objects (SO). These are non-resonant objects that come near enough to Neptune to have their orbits changed from time to time (such as causing changes in semi-major axis of at least 1.5 AU in 10 million years) and are thus undergoing gravitational scattering .
A classical Kuiper belt object, also called a cubewano (/ ˌ k juː b iː ˈ w ʌ n oʊ / "QB1-o"), [a] is a low-eccentricity Kuiper belt object (KBO) that orbits beyond Neptune and is not controlled by an orbital resonance with Neptune. Cubewanos have orbits with semi-major axes in the 40–50 AU range and, unlike Pluto, do not cross Neptune's ...
Salacia (minor-planet designation: 120347 Salacia) is a large trans-Neptunian object (TNO) in the Kuiper belt, approximately 850 km (530 mi) in diameter.It was discovered on 22 September 2004, by American astronomers Henry Roe, Michael Brown and Kristina Barkume at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States.