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2021 RR205
2021 RR205 is an extreme trans-Neptunian object discovered by astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chad Trujillo with the Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory on 5 September 2021. It resides beyond the outer extent of the Kuiper belt on a distant and highly eccentric orbit detached from Neptune's gravitational influence, with a large perihelion distance of 55.5 astronomical units (AU).[4] Its large orbital semi-major axis (~1,000 AU) suggests it is potentially from the inner Oort cloud.[6][7] 2021 RR205 and 2013 SY99 both lie in the 50–75 AU perihelion gap that separates the detached objects from the more distant sednoids; dynamical studies indicate that such objects in the inner edge this gap weakly experience "diffusion", or inward orbital migration due to minuscule perturbations by Neptune.[6] While Sheppard considers 2021 RR205 a sednoid, researchers Yukun Huang and Brett Gladman do not.[8] 2021 RR205's heliocentric distance was 60 AU when it was discovered.[2] It has been detected in precovery observations by the Dark Energy Survey at Cerro Tololo Observatory from as early as July 2017.[3] It last passed perihelion in the early 1990s and is now moving outbound from the Sun.[1] References
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