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
Sun Dutch "zon", Old High German "sunna", modern German "Sonne", Old Norse "sunna", and Gothic "sunnō". All Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *"sunnōn". The Latin name for the Sun, "Sol", is used at times as another name for the Sun, but is not commonly used in everyday English. "Sol" is also used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet, such as Mars. The related word "solar" is the usual adjectival term used for the Sun, in terms such as solar day, solar eclipse, and Solar System. A mean Earth solar