← Back to dex - Centaur: adrift between the giants +20
- Large body (100-500 km) +12
- Darker than charcoal +10
- Notably bright (low H) +8
- Has a proper name +8
- Kuiper-belt object +5
Total score 63
15 more points to reach Anomaly.
Badges
- ❄️ Kuiper-belt object · +5
- 🗿 Large body (100-500 km) · +12
- 💡 Notably bright (low H) · +8
- 🏷️ Has a proper name · +8
- 🦌 Centaur: adrift between the giants · +20
- 🕶️ Darker than charcoal · +10
✨ Trivia
What it actually is
- 🛸 Its orbit family. A centaur, wandering between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune on a path nothing can stabilise. Half asteroid and half comet, and gone from this orbit within a few million years.
- 🌞 Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 8.63 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Saturn.
- 🔁 One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 91.4 years.
- 🥏 How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 8.63 and 31.95 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
- 🧱 Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is about 8.8× the length of Manhattan island.
- 🚶 Walk around it. Walking its equator at a steady pace, eight hours a day, would take about 14.9 days.
By the numbers
- 📐 Size. Roughly 190 km across.
What's in a name
- 🏷️ Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.
Properties
- albedo
- 0.044
- aphelion au
- 31.95
- designation
- 5145
- diameter km
- 190
- eccentricity
- 0.5747
- full name
- 5145 Pholus (1992 AD)
- h mag
- 7.07
- inclination
- 24.76
- mean motion deg day
- 0.0108
- moid au
- 7.65
- name
- Pholus
- named
- yes
- orbit class
- CEN
- perihelion au
- 8.629
- rotation period h
- 9.98
- semi major au
- 20.29
- spec taxonomy
- Z
- spect
- Z
About Pholus
Pholus is an epic kbo. It has spectral type Z and swings within 8.629 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
A centaur, wandering between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune on a path nothing can stabilise. Half asteroid and half comet, and gone from this orbit within a few million years.
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, Pholus is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why Pholus is an epic kbo
Pholus scores 63 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Kuiper-belt object, Large body (100-500 km), Notably bright (low H), Has a proper name, Centaur: adrift between the giants and Darker than charcoal — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.