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2001 KX76

28978 Ixion is a Kuiper belt object discovered in 2001 with a diameter of approximately 1055 km and a mean orbital radius of 39.31 AU. Ixion is a Plutino: it has a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune.

Little is known about Ixion. The latest spectroscopy results indicate that it has a surface that is a mixture of dark carbon and tholin, which is a heteropolymer formed by irradiation of clathrates of water and organic compounds (such as methane or ethane).

Reference

Pre-print about Ixion's surface from the Planetary Systems Research group of the University of Helsinki.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "2001 KX76".