The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that the centaur called 2060 Chiron is an oddball. The object, which is a minor body that orbits the sun in the expanse between Jupiter and Neptune, has a mixture of ices and gases that make it stand out from other objects in the distant outer solar system.
Around a thousand centaurs are currently known, but the 135-mile-wide (218-km-wide) Chiron was the first to be discovered in 1977. Centaurs are thought to have originated out in the frozen realm beyond Neptune, but later moved in-system after their orbits were perturbed by gravitational resonances with the ice giant. Because they move closer to the sun, solar heating can cause certain ices to sublimate, forming a gaseous halo or coma around the centaur, a bit like a comet.
