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Neptune, too, might have a new companion around. Uranus can pull and push minor bodies around. Image credit: NASA Between the orbits of Saturn and Neptune, there is a population of minor space bodies known as the Centaurs. There could be up to 10 million of them, but they tend to have unstable orbits due to the gravitational influences of the giant planets. Occasionally, some enter a temporary stable orbit, joining one of the planets in a resonance. This is what is believed to have happened between Centaur 2015 OU194 and the planet Uranus, the first ever report of this...

In a groundbreaking discovery published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has confirmed the existence of a rare object located far beyond Neptune. Known as 2020 VN40, this trans-Neptunian object is in a unique orbital resonance with the giant planet Neptune. For every ten orbits Neptune completes, 2020 VN40 completes one orbit around the Sun. This rare alignment provides key insights into how objects in the outer solar system behave and evolve over time. The research, which draws from extensive observations made by the Large Inclination Distant...