So apparently Salacia is a Kuiper belt object that is 900 km across and has a satellite about 300 km across. It was discovered in 2004 and named in 2011.
But I have never heard of it. Have you?
No.
dv said:
So apparently Salacia is a Kuiper belt object that is 900 km across and has a satellite about 300 km across. It was discovered in 2004 and named in 2011.But I have never heard of it. Have you?
No. Sounds like a new Arnotts cracker.
Not I.
>But I have never heard of it.
That’s what comes of ignoring all those B.C. cut-&-paste threads.
I mean I’ve heard of all the other named trans-Neptunian objects … Sedna, Orcus, Varuna … and this Salacia is quite a large one. Seems odd that it escaped my notice.
Never heard of it but now I know that Salacia was the mother of Triton…
dv said:
I mean I’ve heard of all the other named trans-Neptunian objects … Sedna, Orcus, Varuna … and this Salacia is quite a large one. Seems odd that it escaped my notice.
Don’t tell Martin, the relationship is rocky already.
i like a bit of salacious gossip.
Crumb
Yes.
There’s always one
dv said:
So apparently Salacia is a Kuiper belt object that is 900 km across and has a satellite about 300 km across. It was discovered in 2004 and named in 2011.
But I have never heard of it. Have you?
No I haven’t, is this an April fools day prank? Let me check. No prank.
First looking up the Minor Planet Center website. (120347) Salacia, also called 2004 SB60, is a trans-neptunian object (to be more specific, a cubewano like Quaoar) with a perigee, apogee and absolute magnitude of 37.506 AU, 46.426 AU and 4.2. The magnitude of 4.2 is large enough for it to appear on Wikipedia’s List of possible dwarf planets
Its diameter is disputed, given by three sources as 540 km, 580 km and 854±45 km. The largest size estimate is the most recent.
It has its own wikipedia page 120347 Salacia which says that Salacia has one natural satellite, Actaea, that orbits its primary every 5.494 days at a distance of 5619±87 km. Actaea has a diameter of 286±24 km or 303±35 km. The smaller diameter is the most recent estimate.
From ArXiv we find that Salacia has a density of about 1.29, making it much less dense than Quaoar (2.18) and Orcus (1.53). For more on Salacia page down to Section 11, Page 18 of that ArXiv article. The same article discusses 8 other large Kuyper belt objects including Quaoar, Ocrus, Haumea, Chiron, Chariklo and Huya if you’re interested.
> perigee, apogee
Oops, I mean perihelion, aphelion of course, it’s in orbit around the Sun not the Earth.
A bit more information on Salacia here
where we learn for instance that Salacia was first observed by Siding Springs in NSW, then by Palomar etc. including Hubble from 2006 to 2008.
Mmm, albedo jokes aside, they certainly kept this one dark. Possibly a conspiracy of some kind.