ATLANTIC SKIES: What's out there beyond Neptune?

Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Breadcrumb Trail Links HomeAtlantic CanadaCape BretonEntertainment & LifeNewfoundland & LabradorNewfoundland And Labrador LifestyleNova ScotiaPrince Edward IslandPEI Lifestyle ATLANTIC SKIES: What's out there beyond Neptune? National Research Council of Canada astronomy survey recently found 27 new, small, and exceptionally faint trans-Neptunian objects that will help us learn about how our solar system was formed Author of the article: By Glenn Roberts Published Sep 23, 2026 Last updated 18 minutes ago 6 minute read NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured seven of Neptune's 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune's large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb's images. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Pro Article content Sounding for all the world like some new exotic car, TNOs (trans-Neptunian objects) exist just beyond the orbit of Neptune, currently the eighth and farthest discovered planet in our solar system to date. Article content A TNO is classified as any minor planet — an astronomical object in direct orbit around the sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet — that orbits the sun at a greater average distance than Neptune (at approximately 30 AU). Source: Wikipedia. Article content Article content Article content Where did they come from? Article content TNOs are thought to have formed during the earliest stages of our solar system, as the dust and gas in the primordial, protoplanetary disk orbiting the young sun clumped together to form planetesimals, from which the planets eventually formed. Article content However, in the farthest outer reaches of the forming solar system, the process of full-size planet formation stopped, leaving behind a huge population of small, icy objects, collectively known as the Kuiper Belt, extending from the orbit of Neptune (approximately 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the sun. Article content The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region beyond Neptune. This distant region is probably populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 100 kms across and an estimated trillion or more comets. NASA Article content What are they? Article content TNOs are considered Kuiper Belt objects and are divided into classical…