Astronomers just found a new object way out in our Solar System, and it’s giving us hints about what things were like billions of years ago. This object, called 2023 KQ14 or “Ammonite,” is like a space rock that orbits super far from the Sun. It was spotted using powerful telescopes and written about in a science journal Nature Astronomy. Ammonite is what scientists call a trans-Neptunian object (TNO). That’s a fancy name for stuff that orbits the Sun way past Neptune, the farthest big planet in our Solar System. Think of the Solar System as a giant playground with the Sun in the middle. Planets like Earth are pretty close to the Sun, but Ammonite is super far away. Even at its closest point to the Sun, called the perihelion, it’s 66 times farther than Earth is from the Sun. That’s about 6 billion miles away! To measure that distance, scientists use something called an astronomical unit (au), where 1 au is the distance from Earth to the Sun. So, Ammonite’s closest point is 66 au. This space rock is special because it’s a Sedna-like object. That means it’s like another far-out object called Sedna, which has a super stretched-out orbit, like a long, skinny oval instead of a circle. Ammonite’s orbit is huge—it has a semi-major axis of 252 au, which is like the average length of its oval path around the Sun. It also tilts a bit, about 11 degrees, like a slightly slanted racetrack. What’s cool is that Ammonite’s orbit fits into a gap scientists didn’t understand before. They call this the q-gap, which is just a missing spot in the distances where they expected to find objects like this. Finding Ammonite is like finding a missing puzzle piece that helps make the picture clearer. Spotting Ammonite was tough because it’s so far away and really dim, like trying to see a tiny candle from miles away at night. It’s probably about the size of a small moon, but it’s so distant that astronomers needed super strong telescopes to find it. Their hard work paid off because Ammonite’s orbit has stayed the same for 4.5 billion years—that’s as old as the Solar System! It’s like a time capsule that hasn’t been bumped around by planets like Neptune, so it can tell us what things were like when the Solar System was born. The coolest part? Ammonite’s weird orbit might be a clue about something big out there, like a mysterious Planet Nine that nobody’s seen yet. Scientists think a big planet or a group of objects might have pushed Ammonite into its path long ago, kind of like how a big kid might nudge a smaller one on the playground. The study doesn’t prove Planet Nine exists, but it makes scientists wonder. The post Astronomers Spot a Rare Object Way Beyond Neptune appeared first on Anomalien.com.