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Offline blobranaTopic starter

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Buffy
« on: December 14, 2005, 11:02:05 PM »
Scientists have found a puzzling new object beyond the orbit of Pluto.
The new object, 2004 XR190, nicknamed "Buffy", has an almost circular orbit, which is tilted  47 degrees from most of the other bodies in our solar system.
It was thought that Neptune was the reason for scattering many other Kuiper Belt Objects into tilted paths. But the objects tend to show other signs of a past interaction with the giant planet, such as moving in elliptical paths and having one part of their orbit pass near Neptune's at 30 astronomical units from the Sun.
Buffy, however, follows a nearly circular path. And it is too distant to have come into direct contact with Neptune, travelling between 52 and 62 AU from the Sun. Its orbit is also too circular - and too small - to have been tilted by a passing star.

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Offline blobranaTopic starter

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Re: Buffy
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2005, 12:43:48 AM »
Hum,
yeah, it`s circular(ish)a la Kepler.

But it shouldn`t be...it`s probably just freakish encounters with other objects, after being pushd out by Neptune, that have made it so...