KSC-04-S-00064
KSC · 2004-03-17
NASA’s researchers have found the most distant object known to orbit our Sun. The planet-like object is three-fourths the size of Pluto and is in the coldest region of the Solar System. Temperatures never rise above minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Named Sedna, for the Inuit Goddess, the planetoid gets even colder as it travels in its 10,500 year orbit. At its farthest distance, Sedna is 84 billion miles away from the Sun. Dr Michael Brown_ NASA’s Associate Professor of Astronomy at California Institute of Technology (One of the very exciting things to me as an astronomer about this object is that we think it’s the first object detected in the Oort cloud, which is a cloud of comets that was hypothesized in 1950 and nothing has been seen of that cloud in that time and we think this is the first thing that really proves the existence of that cloud of comets. ) Scientists feel there may be evidence that Sedna also has its own moon. NASA’s ground and space telescopes are prepared to investigate the planetoid over the next 72 years during its closest distance to the Earth