featured-image

The Sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and around three trillion comets and icy bodies. Although not all objects of the solar system are as well known as Earth, Jupiter, or other celestial bodies with main character energy, they still make up a valuable part of our star system and contribute to our understanding of its origins. From quasi-moons to asteroids with rings, the Solar System is beaming with weird and exotic objects that tell the story of how it came to be billions of years ago.

As an ancient planetesimal in the Kuiper Belt, Arrokoth likely formed 4 to 4.5 billion years ago from a sea of icy particles in the far reaches of the solar system. Scientists knew little about this icy world until the New Horizons mission the object in January 2019; the probe was 4 billion miles (6.



5 billion kilometers) from Earth at the time, making it the most distant exploration of a solar system object. In the images sent back by New Horizons, Arrokoth appeared as two lumpy lobes fused together. The two lobes have light and dark patterns of unknown origin with a bright collar separating them.

According to NASA, these features provide clues about how this object was assembled during the formation of the solar system. Chariklo is the largest of its kind and the first small body discovered to have a ring system. Centaurs are hybrid objects with a comet-like composition (they are icy bodies) and are the size of asteroids.

They are u.

Back to Health Page