2007 OR10: The Snow White Planet with Water Ice

2007 OR10 is the name of a trans-Neptunian object, which has been largest body in the Solar System without a name. It was discovered in 2007 by former graduate student Meg Schwamb of the California Institute of Technology. This dwarf planet nicknamed Snow White orbits at the edge of the Solar System. Roughly half the size of Pluto. At one time it was supposed that the diminutive planet was a white, icy world broken away from a larger planet, but further studies show it may be the most red of all.

• It is located in the Kuiper Belt Object and is a frozen world, covered in water ice which may have originated volcanically. Kuiper belt — the ring of icy bodies that orbit the sun beyond Neptune.

2007 OR10 is actually red but half of its surface is covered by water ice that probably spewed from ancient cryovolcanoes. It’s believed that the dwarf planet’s reddish hue likely comes from a thin layer of methane, the last gasps of an atmosphere that has been bleeding off into space for eons.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2011