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Jan 16, 2022
This object was discovered in 1977 by American astronomer Charles Koval at the private Palomar Observatory (California, USA). It was named after the centaur Chiron from ancient Greek mythology. The discovery of Chiron was an event and aroused great interest among scientists, as it was the first object discovered in orbit far outside the asteroid belt.
Chiron's orbit in the solar system
Later, by decision of the IAU, all other objects of this class began to be called centaurs. This is a group of asteroids located between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune, transitional in characteristics between the main belt asteroids and Kuiper belt objects. Therefore, some of them look like comets and have unstable, highly elongated orbits.
The dimensions of space objects are determined based on the absolute magnitude and albedo, but in the case of Chiron, it is very difficult to estimate these parameters, since the variable cometary activity does not allow this to be done accurately. Therefore, data on the size of Chiron are approximate - from 180 to 220 km.
Photo of Chiron and his coma. Hubble Space Telescope, 1996
Immediately after the discovery, Chiron was classified as an asteroid, which was designated: "2060 Chiron". Already in 1988, he had signs of cometary activity. As a result, it was assigned to the class of short-period comets with the designation: "95P / Chiron". Currently, it is one of the few objects that belong to both asteroids and comets, indicating that there is no clear boundary between these two classes of objects.
Source: Moscow Planetarium.
Related links:
ROSCOSMOS Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/33833/
Moscow Planetarium: https://www.roscosmos.ru/tag/moskovskiy-planetariy/
Comet: https://www.roscosmos.ru/tag/kometa/
Images, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Moscow Planetarium/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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