Astronomers Amazed to Identify ‘Cosmic Triplets’ Hiding in Plain Sight Beyond Neptune For decades, astronomers have mopped ...

Floating around at the edge of the Solar System are leftovers from its formation. This is the Kuiper Belt, which is composed ...

The theory contrasts with widely held ideas that most KBO formation occurs through collisions. If verified, the intriguing system, known as 148780 Altjira, would represent only the second confirmation ...

New research suggests that a binary pair of Kuiper Belt objects, known as the Altjira system, is actually made up of three separate bodies orbiting one another in a complex triad. This rare orbital ...

Located in the outer realms of our solar system, some 44 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, the Altjira System is the subject of this compelling research. Though two KBOs were seen in ...

This artist’s concept depicts one of the possible scenarios for the 148780 Altjira system in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. It is likely a hierarchical triple formation, in which two very close ...

The discovery centers around Altjira, a system located 3.7 billion miles from Earth. Hubble images originally showed two objects orbiting each other. However, after analyzing 17 years of data ...

"The universe is filled with a range of three-body systems, including the closest stars to Earth, the Alpha Centauri star system, and we're finding that the Kuiper Belt may be no exception!" ...

An illustration of the 148780 Altjira system of two or maybe three asteroids. Inset: the Hubble Space Telescope | Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) If it is confirmed as a triplet, ...