Quaoar

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Hubble Space Telescope image of Quaoar. Sixteen exposures for this blurry blob.
An artist's conception of what Quaoar looks like.

5000 Quaoar is a dwarf planet[1] found in the Kuiper Belt at approximately 1.6 billion kilometers (roughly equivalent to 1 billion miles, or 42 astronomical units (AU) away), it is about 1250 kilometers in diameter, approximately the size of Pluto's "moon"[2] Charon. No, it's not a planet, either.[3] It was discovered by Chad Trujillo and Michael E. Brown, using a 48-inch wide telescope at Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology. Using the Hubble Space Telescope to measure it's width and diameter, of which it found that it is around 800 miles in diameter. It also takes around 288 Earth-years to complete one "Quaoarian" orbit, and it is composed primarily of various volatile elements and rocks.[4] It also apparently has a moon, named Weywot. The term Quaoar comes from a character in a Native American creation story, and Weywot comes from its son.

[edit] Quaoar and woo

Quaoar was named after a creation god, but the creationists are trying to give their own god the credit. John Hartnett in the Journal of Creation claims that the composition of Quaoar's surface, being water and ammonia, is clear evidence for a young solar system and against a 5-billion-year timescale, as the smooth ice surface would have worn away in a few million years.[5] (In fact, the surface is thought to refresh itself through cryovulcanism[6] — water-ammonia ice melts at -95°C.) Jonathan Sarfati has taken the time to reassure us that Quaoar, like the comets, was created on the fourth day.[7] Phew!

Ian Musgrave on The Panda's Thumb has also suggested how to do horoscopes involving Quaoar and the constellation Ophiuchus.[8] Astrologers have yet to take up his helpful suggestion.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Or maybe not. It's currently classified as a Trans-Neptunian Object, or TNO, and it is one of the potential dwarf planets out there.
  2. There's a debate over whether Charon is a moon or not.
  3. http://www.chadtrujillo.com/quaoar/
  4. http://www.space.com/25817-quaoar.html
  5. http://creation.mobi/article/5481
  6. http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/quaoar.html
  7. http://creation.com/cometsportents-of-doom-or-indicators-of-youth
  8. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/01/a-horoscope-id.html
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