We Have a New Record For Furthest-Away Solar System Object

What do you call a dwarf planet that's further away than a dwarf planet you've already dubbed "FarOut?"

If you guessed "FarFarOut" then congrats! You think just like the scientists that discovered the object way out at the outer edges of the solar system. The object, which we know nothing about other then that it exists, is currently 140 AU from the sun and probably has an orbit lasting a thousand years or so. While objects we have discovered have orbits that will take them past that (the dwarf planet Sedna will get thousands of AU away), this beats the current record for furthest object from the sun currently by about 20 AU.

The discovery is also helpful for scientists looking for a potential ninth planet hanging around in the far-flung corners of the solar system. If we can find little dwarf planets billions of miles away, then we can find something that may be 10 times the size of Earth if we look in the right place.

Strange Dwarf Planet Gets Even Stranger

The dwarf planet Haumea, orbiting out in the Kuiper Belt, is an interesting place. For one, there's a big pink spot on its surface, the origin of which is a complete mystery. Then things get really weird. Haumea is a fairly big Kuiper Belt Object with about a third of the mass of Pluto. The length of its longest axis is over 2,300 kilometers, almost equal to that of Pluto, but the average radius is 700 kilometers, 500 less than Pluto's. So, what's going on? Well, despite being big enough for gravity to pull Haumea into a sphere, it isn't. It looks more like this.

Why does it look like a football? We're not completely sure, but considering Haumea makes a full rotation in 4 hours (faster than any other object larger than 100 kilometers), that may have something to do with it.

So, what new news could we have gotten from this icy little football world? It's simple, really, Haumea also has rings. According to observation, this ring system is 43 miles wide, and orbits about 620 miles above the surface. My question, which isn't really addressed, is whether or not the ring system would be circular or oval shaped. I'm guessing circular, and the distance either varies or the rings are aligned so that they could always be 620 miles away. Oval shaped rings would be weird. Anyway, this just adds another mystery to this little dwarf planet which I can't imagine will get a definitive answer anytime soon. Do you see us sending a spacecraft there in the next 50 years? I don't. It's a long way away, and there are a lot bigger questions other than "why is this place football-shaped, and why does it have rings?"