Overview

• 2017 OF201, a trans-Neptunian object with an estimated diameter of 470–820 km, has been officially added to the Minor Planet Center catalog.
• Its extreme orbit ranges from 44–45 AU at perihelion to over 1,600 AU at aphelion, taking approximately 25,000 years to complete a full revolution around the Sun.
• The object’s trajectory deviates from the clustering patterns of other extreme TNOs, raising questions about the validity of the Planet Nine hypothesis.
• The discovery was made using archival data from telescopes, with researchers identifying the object in 19 exposures spanning seven years.
• Astronomers suggest that hundreds of similar distant objects may exist, remaining undetected due to their vast distances from the Sun.