Out in the blackness of space beyond Jupiter there is a wild hybrid orbiter unlike any other. It's been named Chiron and astronomers say it's a type of centaur, a half-comet-half-asteroid.
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00:00Out in the blackness of space beyond Jupiter, there is a wild hybrid orbiter unlike any
00:08other.
00:09It's been named Chiron, and astronomers say it's a type of centaur, no not the half-horse
00:13half-man variety, rather a cosmic solar system traveler that is half comet, half asteroid,
00:19and new observations have revealed just how wild it is even amongst its peers.
00:24Experts say that often it's seen with all the trappings of a comet, including being
00:27surrounded by a debris field, and it's utterly gigantic, roughly 125 miles in diameter.
00:33So where does it come from?
00:34Well, like many solar system travelers, it was likely formed around 4.5 billion years
00:39ago when the rest of the planets did.
00:40However, Chiron is especially interesting because it also has rings that orbit it, just
00:45like a tiny Saturn.
00:46It also often has a tail, the result of flying close enough to the sun that its icy material
00:51sublimates and off-gases.
00:53Experts say they believe that centaurs used to reside beyond Neptune, and for that reason
00:57are some of the best snapshots of what the environment would have been like in the early
01:01days of the solar system.