Comet
A centaur that orbits between Saturn and Uranus, classified as both an asteroid and a comet due to its occasional cometary activity.
| Type | Comet |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 13.70 AU |
| Diameter | 218 km |
| Mass | 4.00 × 10¹⁸ kg |
| Temperature | -198°C |
| Orbital period | 18,500 days |
| Rotation period | 5.918 hours |
| Apparent magnitude | 14.9 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1977 |
Comets are icy bodies that vaporise as they near the Sun, and it's that boiling-off gas and dust, not the comet itself, that forms the tail.
At 218 km across, 2060 Chiron is 1.7 percent of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 13.7 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 1.9 hours to reach it.
A single orbit takes 51 years.
An average temperature of 75 K works out at -198 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1977.
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