What size are the planetoids in the Kuiper Belt?
Planetary scientists at the California Institute of Technology and Yale University on Tuesday night discovered a new planetoid in the outer fringes of the solar system. The planetoid, currently known only as 2004 DW, could be even larger than Quaoar–the current record holder in the area known as the Kuiper Belt–and is some 4.4 billion miles from Earth. According to the discoverers, Caltech associate professor of planetary astronomy Mike Brown and his colleagues Chad Trujillo (now at the Gemini North observatory in Hawaii), and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, the planetoid was found as part of the same search program that discovered Quaoar in late 2002. The astronomers use the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory and the recently installed QUEST CCD camera built by a consortium including Yale and the University of Indiana, to systematically study different regions of the sky each night. Unlike Quaoar, the new planetoid hasn’t yet been pinpointed on old photograp
