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145452 Ritona

9/3/2026

145452 Ritona

145452 Ritona (provisional designation 2005 RN43) is a large trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt. It was discovered on 10 September 2005 by astronomers Andrew Becker, Andrew Puckett and Jeremy Kubica at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. Ritona has a measured diameter of 679+55−73 km, which is large enough that some astronomers consider it a possible dwarf plan

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145452 Ritona (provisional designation 2005 RN43) is a large trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt. It was discovered on 10 September 2005 by astronomers Andrew Becker, Andrew Puckett and Jeremy Kubica at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. Ritona has a measured diameter of 679+55−73 km, which is large enough that some astronomers consider it a possible dwarf planet. Ritona has a dark and reddish surface made of water ice, carbon dioxide ice, carbon monoxide ice, and various organic compounds (tholins). Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope have shown that carbon dioxide ice is more abundant than water ice in Ritona's surface, which suggests that there is a thin layer of carbon dioxide ice covering Ritona's surface. Ritona is not known to have any natural satellites or moons, which means there is currently no way to measure its mass and density.

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This article is an automated import of the Wikipedia article "145452 Ritona", available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/145452_Ritona . Text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.