Scientists announced on 3-15-2004, the discovery of a frozen, shiny red world about eight billion miles from Earth. It is believed to be the most distant known object in the Solar System. They call it a "planetoid" because it doesn't meet the definition of a planet.

Named Sedna, after the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, it is about three-quarters the size of Pluto, 800 to 1,100 miles, and probably half rock, half ice. "There's absolutely nothing like it in the solar system," said Mike Brown, the California Institute of technology astronomer who led the NASA-funded team that discovered the planetoid last November.

Sedna follows a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun. An orbit that takes 10,500 years to complete and loops as far out as 84 billion miles from the Sun. The Sun would appear from Sedna's surface small enough that the head of a pin would block it out. Sedna is the largest object found orbiting the Sun since the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Quaoar, discovered in 2002, is smaller. CalTech's Palomar Observatory 48-inch telescope was used to make the discovery.

Brown and his colleagues believe Sedna is the first known member of the Oort Cloud. Its location may have been affected by star that is no longer nearby. "There's not much else out there, so it hasn't been impacted by other objects, it hasn't been heated by the Sun. It really has just been sitting out there at 400 degrees below zero for the last 4.5 billion years." There may even be a tiny moon trailing Sedna.

John Antczak, Associated Press, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3-16-04, pg. A3