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Chiron and the Centaurs: escapees from the Kuiper belt

Abstract

The Centaurs—a group of objects orbiting chaotically among the giant planets of our Solar System—appear to be a population transitional in size between typical short-period comets and the large Kuiper-belt objects that orbit beyond Neptune. They promise to reveal much about the origin of and interrelationships between the icy bodies of the outer Solar System.

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Stern, A., Campins, H. Chiron and the Centaurs: escapees from the Kuiper belt. Nature 382, 507–510 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/382507a0

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