Quaoar

dwarf planet · Kuiper Belt · ice world · space discovery

Icy and ancient. Quaoar is a dwarf planet covered in crystalline water ice, reddish tholins, and traces of frozen methane. It's one of thousands of icy worlds orbiting in the Kuiper Belt, a region way beyond Neptune.

Has its own rings. Quaoar is one of the few dwarf planets that scientists have discovered has rings around it, just like Saturn and other giant planets in our solar system.

Half the size of Pluto. With an average diameter of 1,100 kilometers (680 miles), Quaoar is roughly half as wide as the dwarf planet Pluto, making it still pretty large for a distant icy world.

Found by astronomers. American scientists Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown discovered Quaoar on June 4, 2002, using the powerful Palomar Observatory telescope in California.

Slightly lumpy shape. Quaoar isn't perfectly round like Earth, but rather slightly stretched and bumpy, shaped like an ellipsoid from its own gravity pulling on the rock and ice.