New Planetoid Found Orbiting The Sun

Manhigh writes: "According to Space.com a rather large celestial body has been found orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt, beyond Neptune. It will probably never be classified as a planet since even Pluto's status as a planet is somewhat controversial. Here's an excerpt from the article: 'Under one assumption about the object's reflectivity (albedo), 2001 KX76 is probably 788 miles (1,270 kilometers), making it 44 miles larger across than Charon and even bigger than Ceres, the largest known asteroid.'"

Comments

funny

[joq]

2001-07-03 01:42:34 Lagest "object" in existence discovered (articles,space)

I was reading about this on BBC which posted a peculiar comment. First they said "a large planet was found ..." then they stated it was not a planet but an object. Well hopefully if we ever received visitors they wouldn't say something like. "We've seen aliens ... " and then "We're not sure if they're from another planet ..." in the same article.

Re:a couple of interesting things

[RedWizzard]

This suggests that Pluto and Charon are simply bodies within another asteriod belt and shouldn't have been classified as planets. And thus we shouldn't make the mistake of classifying this, too, as a planet, even though it is larger.

Charon is Pluto's moon so it's never been classified as a planet. One of those links of yours is about Chiron (which is a Centaur object - a sort of cross between an asteroid and a comet), but that has never been classified as a major planet either.

Also note that this object may be slightly larger than Charon but it is considerably smaller than Pluto (Charon is slightly over half the diameter and about 1/7 of the mass of Pluto). The arguments for and against Pluto being a major planet are both compelling and this discovery really doesn't add anything to either side of the debate.

Kuiper Express anyone?

[Tackhead]

Hmm, if I read that space.com orbit correctly, this thing's moving closer to the Sun rather than away from it (as Pluto is doing).

Given the high probability that any Pluto Express spacecraft, if approved, will actually be built and launched in time to make it there before Pluto's atmosphere freezes out, how 'bout a trip to this thing (to see if it has an atmosphere that hasn't frozen out) instead?

(...possible reddish crud on the surface... very old organics... yummmm...)

Hell, build and launch two spacecraft and look at 'em both. Marginal cost of the second spacecraft is chickenfeed compared to the design work of building the first. Build a clone of DS1 and let it find its own way there with an ion engine. Just launch something goddamnit... *grumblegrumblegrumble*