'Farout,' the most-distant solar system object discovered

12/17/18
For the first time, an object in our solar system has been found more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the sun. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced the discovery Monday, calling the object 2018 VG18. But the researchers who found it are calling it "Farout." They believe the spherical object is a dwarf planet more than 310 miles in diameter, with a pinkish hue. That color has been associated with objects that are rich in ice, and given its distance from the sun, that isn't hard to believe. Its slow orbit probably takes more than 1,000 years to make one trip around the sun, the researchers said. The distance between the Earth and the sun is an AU, or astronomical unit -- the equivalent of about 93 million miles. Farout is 120 AU from the sun. Eris, the next most distant object known, is 96 AU from the sun. For reference, Pluto is 34 AU away. The object was found by the Carnegie Institution for Science's Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii's David Tholen and Northern Arizona University's Chad Trujillo.

"2018 VG18 is much more distant and slower moving than any other observed Solar System object, so it will take a few years to fully determine its orbit," Sheppard said in a statement. "But it was found in a similar location on the sky to the other known extreme Solar System objects, suggesting it might have the same type of orbit that most of them do. The orbital similarities shown by many of the known small, distant Solar System bodies was the catalyst for our original assertion that there is a distant, massive planet at several hundred AU shepherding these smaller objects."

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Carjosse said:

That is far out man.

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