<
October 7, 2002

Donald Savage
Headquarters
Washington
Phone: 202/358-1547

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore
Phone: 410/338-4514

Robert Tindol
Caltech
Pasadena, Calif.
Phone: 626/395-3631

RELEASE: 02-190

Hubble Spots an Icy World Far Beyond Pluto

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the largest object in the solar system seen since the discovery of Pluto 72 years ago.

Approximately half the size of Pluto, the icy world 2002 LM60, dubbed "Quaoar" (pronounced kwa-whar) by its discoverers, is the farthest object in the solar system ever to be resolved by a telescope. It was initially detected by a ground-based telescope as simply a dot of light, until astronomers aimed Hubble's powerful telescope at it.

This is an artist's impression of the icy Kuiper belt object 2002 LM60, dubbed "Quaoar" by its discoverers. [More]

Quaoar is about 4 billion miles away from Earth, well over a billion miles farther away than Pluto. Unlike Pluto, its orbit around the Sun is circular, even more so than most of the planetary-class bodies in the solar system.

Although smaller than Pluto, Quaoar is greater in volume than all the asteroids combined (though probably only one-third the mass of the asteroid belt, because it's icy rather than rocky). Quaoar's composition is theorized to be largely ices mixed with rock, not unlike the makeup of a comet, though 100 million times greater in volume.

-end-
(Source)



* * *



NASA press releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to domo@hq.nasa.gov. In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type the words "subscribe press-release" (no quotes). The system will reply with a confirmation via E-mail of each subscription. A second automatic message will include additional information on the service.



NASA releases also are available via CompuServe using the command GO NASA.

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, address an E-mail message to domo@hq.nasa.gov, leave the subject blank, and type only "unsubscribe press-release" (no quotes) in the body of the message.



Dan