, provisional designation , is a trans-Neptunian object of the scattered disc, orbiting the Sun in the outermost region of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

. It has a diameter of approximately 400 kilometers. It was discovered on 11 November 2010, by American astronomers David Rabinowitz, Megan Schwamb and Suzanne Tourtellotte at ESO's La Silla Observatory site in northern Chile, when it was 38 AU from the Sun.

Orbit and classification

orbits the Sun at a distance of 34.3–266.6 AU once every 1846 years (674,262 days;

semi-major axis In geometry, the major axis of an ellipse is its longest diameter: a line segment that runs through the center and both foci, with ends at the two most widely separated points of the perimeter. The semi-major axis (major semiaxis) is the long ...

of 150.5 AU). Its orbit has a high eccentricity of 0.77 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

of 5 ° with respect to the ecliptic. Small number statistics suggest that this body may be trapped in a 3:2 orbital resonance with an unseen planet beyond Neptune with a

of 195–215 AU. The first

precovery In astronomy, precovery (short for pre-discovery recovery) is the process of finding the image of an object in images or photographic plates predating its discovery, typically for the purpose of calculating a more accurate orbit. This happens mos ...

was taken by the

Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-spectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project began in 2000 a ...

at the Apache Point Observatory in 1998, extending the body's

observation arc In observational astronomy, the observation arc (or arc length) of a Solar System body is the time period between its earliest and latest observations, used for tracing the body's path. It is usually given in days or years. The term is mostly use ...

by 12 years prior to its discovery. The precoveries were found in May 2015 ().

Physical characteristics

A rotational lightcurve of was obtained from photometric observation by members of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The light-curve gave a

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

of hours with a brightness variation of 0.18 magnitude ().

Diameter and albedo

While American astronomer

Michael E. Brown Michael E. Brown (born June 5, 1965) is an American astronomer, who has been professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), including ...

assumes a diameter of 471 kilometers and an

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of sunlight, solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body ...

of 0.07, the ''Johnston Archive'' estimates a diameter of 443 kilometers with generic albedo of 0.09. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes an albedo of 0.10 and calculates a diameter of 401 kilometers. These estimates are based on an

absolute magnitude Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse Logarithmic scale, logarithmic Magnitude (astronomy), astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent mag ...

between 5.0 and 5.3.

Naming

As of 2018, this

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...

remains unnamed.

References

External links