Sedna

[Avian(Admin)]

"Sedna" (an unofficial name) is the largest object found so far outside Pluto. It's location is about 13 billion (thousand million for you Brits) kilometers away. This puts it outside the Kuiper Belt, a collection of icy rocks that goes out to around 50 AU or so. But it's also inside the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud, a theoretical sphere home to trillions of cometary bodies that's supposed to extend about halfway to the next star. Sedna has a huge, ellipical orbit around the sun. It's distance to the sun ranges from 11 billion km to 150 billion km. It takes 12,000 years to orbit the sun!

It's very large. They don't know the exact size yet, but it's smaller than Pluto - about half the size of our moon - somewhere between 1,200 to 1,700 km (Pluto is about 2400 km).

It's the largest object discovered since Pluto, which was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.

It was discovered by a team looking for large objects in the outer part of the solar system. They are the same team that discovered "Quaoar" a few years ago (1,300 km across, and much closer).

Is it a planet? That topic is sure to be debated! Many scientists are holding Pluto as the standard minimum size for a planet - anything under would be a minor planet. But that's certainly arbitrary. The search continues!

Avian