William Gonzalez Sierra / UCFArtist’s representation of a centaur like Chiron: the colors in the tail indicate the composition (gas, ice, or dust)William Gonzalez Sierra / UCF
Discovered in 1977, 2060 Chiron, which has a diameter of approximately 200 kilometers (km), moves and behaves like an asteroid, but has a bright tail of dust and gas like a comet. The comet-asteroid hybrid, orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune, is also known as a centaur in allusion to the mythological creature that is half horse, half man. A group of astronomers detailing its chemical composition based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope discovered something else special about the centaur. The surface of this comet-asteroid hybrid contains chemicals that likely existed before the formation of the Solar System, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane, and frozen water. “What is unique about Chiron is that we can observe both the surface, where most of the ices can be found, and the coma, where we see gases that are originating from the surface or just below it,” said lead researcher Noemi Pinilla-Alonso of the University of Central Florida (UCF), USA, in a university statement (UCF, December 17; Astronomy & Astrophysics, December 18).
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