A strange comet/asteroid hybrid has baffled scientists: it's unlike anything else in the solar system

In deep space, beyond the orbit of Jupiter, a strange object is hiding. It is a type of outer body in the solar system known as a centaur, called Chiron.

But even among its fellow centaurs, Chiron is special. New observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show how unlike anything else astronomers have ever seen, ScienceAlert writes.

"It's an oddity compared to most other centaurs," said Charles Schambeau, a physicist at the University of Central Florida.

"It has periods when it behaves like a comet because it has rings of material around it, and perhaps a field of debris of fine dust or rocky material orbiting around it. Many questions about the properties of Chiron allow for this unique behavior," the scientist added.

According to scientists, the solar system is filled with rocky and icy remnants left over from its formation some 4.5 billion years ago. The centaurs, which hover mainly between Jupiter and Neptune, whose orbits cross the paths of at least one of the giant planets, are an interesting group.

Chiron, for example, has properties similar to those of asteroids but also has cometary activity. And it has a small planetary ring around it, astronomers describe.

Since Chiron is considered something of a time capsule of the formation of the solar system, scientists are eager to learn more about this strange object, but its distance makes it difficult to study, experts say.

Led by planetary scientist Noemi Pinilla-Alonso from the University of Oviedo in Spain, the team of researchers turned their attention to the James Webb Telescope to see if it could observe details that have so far eluded scientists.

According to scientists, Chiron sometimes ejects gas and dust, just like comets do. The researchers used James Webb to find out what these emissions consist of.

"What's unique about Chiron is that we can observe both the surface, where most of the ices are, and the coma, where we see gases that come from the surface or just below it," Pinilla-Alonso said.

The scientists found carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, ethane, propane, acetylene, methane, and water ice. The researchers say the discovery of methane is particularly notable because the results suggest that Chiron's coma is full of it.

Scientists believe that the centaurs were once members of an even more distant population of icy objects in the solar system.

The researchers speculate that the methane, carbon dioxide, and water ice they observe on Chiron may be some of the pristine materials it inherited from the birth of the solar system. Other compounds, such as ethane, propane, and acetylene, could have formed on the centaur's surface as a result of oxidation.

"Based on our new James Webb data, I'm not sure we have a standard centaur," Pinilla-Alonso said.

The researchers plan to continue to observe Chiron to see more clues about the nature of these strange, icy objects.

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