Chiron is a minor body discovered by Charles Kowal based on fotographs on 18 and 19 October 1977.
From the start it was almost certain it wasn't a planet or planetoid In 1988 a tail was observed, indicating was a comet bigger than anyone seen before.
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Chiron, discovered in 1977, is an unusual object whose highly-elliptical, 50-year orbit around the sun brings it within the orbit of Saturn and as far out as the orbit of Uranus. It exhibits properties of both a comet (it has a coma) and an asteroid (it is as big as a large asteroid -- some 200 km in diameter -- much larger than the biggest known comet), so it has been designated as one of a class of objects known as Centaurs. These half-comet/half-asteroid objects were named after the mythical half-man/half-horse; Chiron is named after the wisest of the Centaurs. Several objects in this class have been discovered; they may be objects that have escaped from the Kuiper belt, the vast disk of cometary bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Chiron is designated alternately as Comet 95P/Chiron or minor planet (2060) Chiron.
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Iván