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These were the most remote objects discovered at the time. The pair of galaxies were found lensed by galaxy cluster CL1358+62 (z = 0.33). This was the first time since 1964 that something other than a quasar held the record for being the most distant object in the universe. [135] [138] [139] [136] [133] [140] PC 1247–3406: Quasar 1991 − ...
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
Apparent magnitude, the brightness of an object as it appears in the night sky. Absolute magnitude, which measures the luminosity of an object (or reflected light for non-luminous objects like asteroids); it is the object's apparent magnitude as seen from a specific distance, conventionally 10 parsecs (32.6 light years).
This glossary of astronomy is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to astronomy and cosmology, their sub-disciplines, and related fields. Astronomy is concerned with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth. The field of astronomy features an extensive vocabulary and a ...
A distant dwarf planet, proposed for a new category named extended scattered disc (E-SDO), [25] detached objects, [26] distant detached objects (DDO) [27] or scattered-extended in the formal classification by DES. [13] 90482 Orcus: A dwarf planet and the second-largest known plutino, after Pluto. Has a relatively large satellite, Vanth. 136108 ...
The cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A direct distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible only for those objects that are "close enough" (within about a thousand parsecs) to Earth. The techniques ...
A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object that has a parallax angle of one arcsecond (not to scale). The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to 3.26 light-years or 206,265 astronomical units (AU), i.e. 30.9 trillion kilometres (19.2 trillion miles).
Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic energy per unit time, and is synonymous with the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In astronomy , luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a star , galaxy , or other astronomical objects .