Quaoar Archives

Three station light curves of 2002 XV93’s stellar occultation on 10 January 2024. The flux points (points with error bars) observed at Kyoto (a), Kiso (b) and Fukushima stations (c) overlaid with the synthetic light curves (red lines, assuming a pure CH4 atmosphere and a best-fit surface pressure of 124 nanobars) are shown as a function of time. In panel c, the gray points are the flux points for the individual exposures, and the black points are those binned by a factor of 8. The vertical arrow represents the closest approach time to the shadow edge at Fukushima, at 13:12:50.818 UT. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Pluto, Status Report

The First Detection Of An Atmosphere On A Trans-Neptunian Object Beyond Pluto

by Keith CowingMay 8, 2026May 8, 2026

Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) in the outer Solar System are predominantly small, icy worlds long presumed to be atmosphereless except for the largest bodies.

IFU images from one of the two PRISM grating observations of Sedna, Gonggong, and Quaoar, collapsed along the entire wavelength axis. For Sedna and Gonggong, the 7x7 pixel yellow box 6 denotes the spectral extraction region, while the 21x21 pixel red box marks the inner boundary of the background region. Quaoar lies in a dense field of background stars, and all pixels outside of the 5x5 pixel yellow extraction box were masked, except for the two designated background regions, marked in red, which are free from visible astronomical sources. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Comets and Asteroids, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

A Tale Of 3 Dwarf Planets: Ices And Organics On Sedna, Gonggong, And Quaoar From JWST Spectroscopy

by Keith CowingOctober 1, 2023October 1, 2023

We observed Sedna, Gonggong, and Quaoar with the NIRSpec instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). All three bodies were observed in the low-resolution prism mode at wavelengths spanning […]