Quaoar
DOI: 10.1063/1.2408506
Is the provisional name for a large, newly discovered planetlike inhabitant of our solar system. First spotted on 4 June 2002, Quaoar (pronounced KWAH-o-wahr) lives in the Kuiper Belt debris zone beyond Neptune’s orbit. Its diameter of 1250 km is about half that of Pluto, and its distance of 42 astronomical units from Earth is far beyond Pluto’s current distance of about 30 AU. (One AU is the mean distance of Earth from the Sun, about 150 million kilometers.) Caltech scientists announced the finding in October at the meeting of the division for planetary sciences of the American Astronomical Society, held in Birmingham, Alabama. (Abstract 9.04,
