The recently discovered trans-Neptunian object 2020 VN40 orbits Neptune in a 1:10 resonance. On average, it is 140 times farther from the Sun than Earth. At aphelion, it dives deep below the plane of the ecliptic.
Mysterious new object
Recently, a group of astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered a new object orbiting far beyond Neptune. An article about this is published in The Planetary Science Journal.
The object has been designated 2020 VN40. Its distinctive feature is that it orbits in resonance with Neptune. One year on this small planetoid lasts ten times longer than on the eighth planet of the Solar System. It completes one orbit every 164 Earth years.
In other words, we are talking about an object that takes a century to complete one orbit. On average, it is 140 times farther from the Sun than Earth. In general, it stays close to Neptune for a very short time, during its closest approach to the Sun. The rest of the time, 2020 VN40 is low below the ecliptic.
Trans-Neptunian objects
The discovery was made as part of the Large Inclined Distant Objects (LiDO) survey, which was searching for unusual objects in the outer Solar System. In this study, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope was used for the main operations, while the Gemini and Magellan Baade observatories were used for additional observations.
The study was designed to search for bodies with orbits extending far above and below the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, a part of the outer Solar System that has not yet been well studied.
A total of 140 objects with elongated orbits have already been discovered within the LiDO project. Scientists are carefully studying them, trying to understand how they are related to large planets and how anomalous their orbital inclinations really are.
According to phys.org
