Key facts
- Discovered by
- Scott S. Sheppard Chadwick A. Trujillo
- Discovery site
- Cerro Tololo Obs.
- Discovery date
- 5 November 2012
- Alternative designations
- " Biden " (nickname)
- Minor planet category
- TNO sednoid
- Observation arc
- 16.94 yr (6,187 d)
- Earliest precovery date
- 19 September 2007
- Aphelion
- 444.1 AU
- Perihelion
- 80.52 AU
- Semi major axis
- 262.3 AU
- Orbital period sidereal
- 4,246 yr
- Mean anomaly
- 24.05°
- Mean motion
- 0° 0 0.836 / day
- Inclination
- 24.0563° ± 0.006°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 90.80°
- Time of perihelion
- ≈ September 1979
- Argument of perihelion
- 293.90°
- Mean diameter
- 450 km (for an assumed albedo of 0.15)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- asteroid
- Named after
- Joe Biden
- Parent body
- Sun
- Minor-planet group
- trans-Neptunian object
- Diameter
- 450
- Orbital period
- 1618082.29787561
- Image
- 2012 VP113 CFHT 2021-10-09.png
Show 19 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Scott S. Sheppard
- time of discovery or invention
- 2012-11-05
- provisional designation
- 2012 VP113
- apparent magnitude
- 23.4
- site of astronomical discovery
- Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
- Commons category
- 2012 VP113
- albedo
- 0.15
- nickname
- Biden
- absolute magnitude
- 4.05
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.70105086836883
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 269.733437140856
- periapsis
- 80.63657680514969
- apoapsis
- 458.8302974765624
- orbital inclination
- 23.996570684981
- longitude of ascending node
- 90.90219811499071
- argument of periapsis
- 294.2897493812458
- mean anomaly
- 3.73802106197905
- time of periapsis
- 2444199.317473682
- epoch
- November 21, 2025
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2012 VP113 is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) orbiting the Sun on an extremely distant and markedly elliptical orbit. It is classified as a sednoid because its orbit never comes closer than 80.5 AU (12.04 billion km; 7.48 billion mi) from the Sun, which is far enough away from the giant planets that their gravitational influence cannot affect the object's orbit noticeably. It was discovered on 5 November 2012 at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, by American astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo, who nicknamed the object "Biden" after the "VP" in its designation. The discovery was announced on 26 March 2014. The object's size has not been measured, but its brightness suggests that it is around 450 km (280 mi) in diameter. 2012 VP113 has a reddish color similar to many other TNOs.
2012 VP113 has not yet been imaged by high-resolution telescopes, so it has no known moons. The Hubble Space Telescope is planned to image 2012 VP113 in 2026, which should determine if it has significantly sized moons.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “2012 VP113” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.