In December 2018, a trio of astronomers – Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, and Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University – set the record for the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. Because the small world is located about three times farther from the Sun than Pluto, the researchers dubbed it Farout. Not to be outdone (even by themselves), the same group of boundary pushers announced the discovery of an even more far-flung object only a few months later. Since the new find sits a couple billion miles farther out than Farout, the team nicknamed it Farfarout.
The discovery of Farfarout, which is about 140 astronomical units from the Sun (where 1 AU equals the distance between Earth and the Sun), was initially announced during a talk by Sheppard on Feb. 21, 2019. During the presentation, Sheppard told the audience he’d spotted Farfarout just the night before while waiting out a snowstorm. “It is a fairly faint object discovered by us in January data from the Subaru telescope,” he told Astronomy. “Based on its distance and brightness, it is likely about [250 miles (400 kilometers)] in size.” This is roughly a quarter the diameter of Ceres, which makes Farfarout a relatively small dwarf planet.
