NASA-funded researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered the most distant object orbiting Earth's Sun. The object, currently referred to as 2003-VB12, is a mysterious planet-like body three times farther from Earth than Pluto. The group that discovered the object has proposed naming the object Sedna, after the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic.  

Sedna is approximately 4/5ths the size of the planet Pluto, and may qualify for categorization as a planet, as opposed to another type of celestial body.  Sedna is currently 8 billion miles away from Earth and follows a path around the sun that takes it as far as 84 billion miles away.  At this distance, the Sun’s light is but a tiny speck and temperatures on the planet average minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sedna’s orbit is so large that it takes some 10,500 years to make a complete revolution around the sun.  “The last time Sedna was this close to the Sun,” Dr. Michael Brown, the principal investigator said, “Earth was just coming out of the last ice age.”  To read more about the discovery of Sedna, visit Dr. Brown’s Sedna page.

If you have a recommendation for a special event in science that you would like us to celebrate, please submit your suggestion through our comment system.