Meet Farout, the new most distant member of our solar system. It's the farthest object we've ever spotted in our neighborhood.

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Artist concept of 2018 VG18, nicknamed "Farout,” with a scale of other Solar System objects.
Roberto Molar Candanosa/Carnegie Institution for Science.
▼ Say hello to 2018 VG18, the most distant solar system object ever spotted. Nicknamed “Farout,” it’s about 120 to 130 astronomical units (AU) from the sun (where one AU is equal to the 93 million miles between the star and our home planet, because humans are self-referential like that). For reference, Pluto—commonly introduced to students as one of the most distant planetary objects in the solar system—is a measly 34 AU away, hardly scratching our cosmic neighborhood’s outer fringes. 2018 VG18 also beats out Eris, the dwarf planet infamous for inspiring Pluto’s status demotion, which previously held the record at 96 AU from the sun. The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which just exited the  heliosphere(though not the solar system itself) is about the same distance as 2018 VG18. Our sun’s  most distant orbiting comets,  which mark the edge of the  system, reach some 50,000 AU  away.
Researchers first spotted 2018  VG18on November 10, using the Japanese Subaru 8-meter telescope located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. “We immediately knew it had to be very distant to have such slow motion across the sky,” says Scott Sheppard, an astronomer based at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, part of a trio of North American scientists who made the discovery. The object was re-observed just this month, using the Magellan telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
Right now, we don’t know a whole lot about what 2018 VG18 really is, except that its “Farout” nickname won’t be changing any time soon. Besides its distance, the team deduced the object is about 500 to 600 kilometers in diameter (about 310 to 370 miles), takes more than a thousand years to orbit the sun, is solid, and emits a pinkish hue—generally a sign of ice irradiated by the sun’s rays over billions of years. “The size of the 2018 VG18 would make it a dwarf planet,” says Sheppard, “as it is large enough that gravity should dominate over any material strength of the object, making it spherical in shape.” So far, however, a formal dwarf planet label is still pending more observations, and for right now, we should think of 2018 VG18 as something like an asteroid. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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