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Post by Mistress Rell on Aug 25, 2008 8:32:04 GMT -5
A huge comet-like object has been spotted inside the orbit of Neptune. The object, at least 30 miles wide, is on the return leg of a 22,500-year journey around the sun, astronomers announced today. Catalogued as 2006 SQ372, the interloper is just over two billion miles (3.2 billion km) from Earth, though its elongated trek takes it to a distance of 150 billion miles (241 billion km), or nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. The only known object with a comparable orbit is Sedna — a distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003. But 2006 SQ372's travels take it more than 1.5 times farther from the sun. Its diameter is estimated at 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 km). Full Article
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