Asteroid-comet chimera Chiron has an unusual ice mix, James Webb Space Telescope finds

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that the centaur called 2060 Chiron is an oddball. The object, which is a minor body that orbits the sun in the expanse between Jupiter and Neptune, has a mixture of ices and gases that make it stand out from other objects in the distant outer solar system.

Around a thousand centaurs are currently known, but the 135-mile-wide (218-km-wide) Chiron was the first to be discovered in 1977. Centaurs are thought to have originated out in the frozen realm beyond Neptune, but later moved in-system after their orbits were perturbed by gravitational resonances with the ice giant. Because they move closer to the sun, solar heating can cause certain ices to sublimate, forming a gaseous halo or coma around the centaur, a bit like a comet.

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