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Article: Distant object hints at the Kuiper belt. (1992 QBI)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- September 26, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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What do astronomers do while waiting for their telescope to produce another snapshot of the night sky? David Jewitt and Jane X. Luu might have made coffee. Instead, they quickly scanned the first two images from the night's observations. To their astonishment, they found the most distant object ever imaged in the solar system -- a slowly moving body in the deep freeze of space well beyond the orbits of Pluto and Neptune.
Further observations confirmed that on Aug. 30 the scientists had indeed detected a mysterious body that lies about 42 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, or 42 times the Earth-sun distance. Jewitt, of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and ...