2012 VP113

Common card · No. 373367

2012 VP113 is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) orbiting the Sun on an extremely distant and markedly elliptical orbit. It is classified as a sednoid because its orbit never comes closer than 80.5 AU (12.04 billion km; 7.48 billion mi) from the Sun, which is far enough away from the giant planets that their gravitational influence cannot affect the object's orbit noticeably. It was discovered on 5 November 2012 at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, by American astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo, who nicknamed the object "Biden" after the "VP" in its designation. The discovery was announced on 26 March 2014. The object's size has not been measured, but its brightness suggests that it is around 450 km (280 mi) in diameter. 2012 VP113 has a reddish color similar to many other TNOs. 2012 VP113 has not yet been imaged by high-resolution telescopes, so it has no known moons. The Hubble Space Telescope is planned to image 2012 VP113 in 2026, which should determine if it has...

Read on Wikipedia · Image CFHT Legacy Survey/CFHT/Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (processed by Nrco0e) (Samantha Lawler is the principal investigator of the observing program that took these images), CC BY 4.0