Nickname
2007 OR10 was discovered by California Institute of Technology astronomers as part of the PhD thesis of Meg Schwamb, who was at the time a graduate student of Brown's. Brown nicknamed the object "Snow White" for its presumed white color, as it would have to be very large or very bright to be detected by their survey. It was also the "seventh dwarf" discovered by Brown's team, after Quaoar in 2002, Sedna in 2003, Haumea and Orcus in 2004, and Makemake and Eris in 2005. However, "Snow White" turned out to be one of the reddest objects in the Kuiper belt, comparable only to Quaoar, making the nickname inappropriate.
2007 OR10 is currently the largest known object in the Solar System without an official name. In 2011 Brown decided he finally had enough information to justify giving it one, because the discovery of water ice and the possibility of methane makes it noteworthy enough to warrant further study.
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Famous quotes containing the word nickname:
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)