![\"This](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14375e-Quaoar.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis image of Quaoar and its moon Weywot was captured by the NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on February 14, 2006. Image credit: NASA \/ ESA \/ Hubble \/ Michael E. Brown.<\/p>\n
Discovered on June 4, 2002, Quaoar<\/a> is a trans-Neptunian object about 1,100 km (690 miles) in diameter.<\/p>\n Like the dwarf planet Pluto, this object dwells in the Kuiper Belt, an icy debris field of comet-like bodies.<\/p>\n Also known as 2002 LM60, it orbits at 45.1-45.6 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and has an orbital period of 284.5 years.<\/p>\n In 2006, astronomers discovered Quaoar\u2019s satellite, Weywot, that has a diameter of 80 km (50 miles) and orbits at 24 Quaoar radii.<\/p>\n More recently, they detected two rings around Quaoar, named Q1R<\/a> and Q2R<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past decade, stellar occultations have revealed the presence of rings around small bodies,\u201d said Florida Space Institute astronomer Benjamin Proudfoot and his colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cAmong these small body ring systems, the rings around Quaoar are perhaps the most mysterious.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe two rings so-far discovered are well-outside the Roche limit and are inhomogeneous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cQuaoar\u2019s outer ring \u2014 named Q1R \u2014 appears to be at least partially confined by mean motion resonances with Quaoar\u2019s moon Weywot, as well as spin-orbit resonances with Quaoar\u2019s triaxial shape.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe inner ring \u2014 Q2R \u2014 is seemingly less dense and its confinement is more uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRecently, during a stellar occultation, simultaneous dropouts from two telescopes revealed the presence of a previously undiscovered satellite or dense ring around Quaoar.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe duration of the dropout implied a minimum diameter\/width of 30 km.\u201d<\/p>\n An artist\u2019s impression of Quaoar and its two rings. Quaoar\u2019s moon Weywot is shown on the left. Image credit: ESA \/ Sci.News.<\/p>\n In their new study, the astronomers aimed to characterize the orbit of this new satellite candidate.<\/p>\n They found that the object is likely on a 3.6-day orbit, placing it near a 5:3 mean motion resonance with Quaoar\u2019s outermost known ring.<\/p>\n They also examined the possibility of observing the satellite with further stellar occultations.<\/p>\n \u201cQuaoar is favorably placed in the Scutum Star Cloud for another 10 years, providing the best opportunities for occultations during its 286 year orbit,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrent ground- and space-based telescopes will struggle to detect the newly-discovered satellite due to both its faintness (9-10 mag fainter than Quaoar) and small angular separation from Quaoar.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur examination of the Webb\/NIRCam images of the Quaoar system show no compelling detection of the satellite,\u201d they noted.<\/p>\n \u201cDirect imaging with current facilities will require considerable investment of telescope time to blindly reacquire the phase of the satellite, if it is indeed detectable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFuture generation telescopes, however, will likely be able to easily observe it.\u201d \u201cExamining the formation and history of the moon-disk system will provide a detailed view into the formation of trans-Neptunian objects,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe encourage sophisticated tidal, hydrodynamical, and collisional modeling of the Quaoar system.\u201d<\/p>\n The team\u2019s paper<\/a> has been submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n Benjamin Proudfoot et al. 2025. Orbital characterization of a newly discovered small satellite around Quaoar. ApJL, in press; arXiv: 2511.07370<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The newly-discovered moon has an estimated diameter of 38 km (23.6 miles) and a V magnitude of 28,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,87360,33505,174946,174947,174948,128,291,285,174949],"class_list":{"0":"post-307575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-dwarf-planet","11":"tag-kuiper-belt","12":"tag-minor-planet","13":"tag-quaoar","14":"tag-quaoars-ring","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-solar-system","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-trans-neptunian-object"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
According to the team, the discovery of the new satellite provides evidence that Quaoar\u2019s rings around may have been part of an initially broad collisional disk that has evolved considerably since its formation.<\/p>\n