The Quirky Underdogs Of The Solar System

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The Sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and around three trillion comets and icy bodies. Although not all objects of the solar system are as well known as Earth, Jupiter, or other celestial bodies with main character energy, they still make up a valuable part of our star system and contribute to our understanding of its origins.

From quasi-moons to asteroids with rings, the Solar System is beaming with weird and exotic objects that tell the story of how it came to be billions of years ago.

As an ancient planetesimal in the Kuiper Belt, Arrokoth likely formed 4 to 4.5 billion years ago from a sea of icy particles in the far reaches of the solar system. Scientists knew little about this icy world until the New Horizons mission probed the object in January 2019; the probe was 4 billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth at the time, making it the most distant exploration of a solar system object.

In the images sent back by New Horizons, Arrokoth appeared as two lumpy lobes fused together. The two lobes have light and dark patterns of unknown origin with a bright collar separating them. According to NASA, these features provide clues about how this object was assembled during the formation of the solar system.

As the smallest and innermost of Saturn's major moons, Mimas takes only 22 hours and 36 minutes to complete an orbit. Scientists believe the moon consists almost entirely of water ice, which is puzzling since it orbits so close to Saturn and has a much more eccentric orbit than the planet's other moon Enceladus, which has geysers of water, according to NASA .

Ceres was the very first object discovered in the main asteroid belt. It was first identified as an asteroid but was later upgraded to a dwarf planet because it was so much bigger and totally different from its rocky counterparts. Ceres was designated a dwarf planet in 2006, along with Pluto.

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