Distant minor planet Distant minor planet A distant minor planet, or "distant object", is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an "asteroid". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. , the MPC maintains 3497 distant objects in its data base. Most distant minor planets are trans-Neptunian objects and centaurs, while relatively few are damocloids, Neptune trojans or Uranus trojans. All distant objects have a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) greater than 6
Minor planet Minor planet A minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun (or more broadly, any star with a planetary system) that is neither a planet nor exclusively classified as a comet. Before 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially used the term "minor planet", but during that year's meeting it reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs). Minor planets can be dwarf planets, asteroids, trojans, centaurs, Kuiper belt objects, and other trans-Neptunian objects. As of 2018, the orbits of 757,626 minor planets were archived at the Minor Planet Center,