Definition
(50000) Quaoar is a large trans-Neptunian object, located in the Kuiper Belt on a quasi-circular orbit at a distance of 43 AU from the Sun. It is named for a Native American creator god, of the Tongva people who lived in the Los Angeles area. With a diameter of 1,280 km, it was, at the time of its discovery in 2002 by Chadwick Trujillo and Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, the biggest trans-Neptunian object. In 2004, crystalline water ice was detected on the surface of Quaoar, which might be a sign of cryovolcanism. The albedo of Quaoar is low (0.07), which probably indicates a surface with a mixture of ices and rocks.
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© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Encrenaz, T. (2015). Quaoar. In: Gargaud, M., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_1322
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_1322
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