Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A Kuiper belt object that is far enough away from Neptune that its orbit around the sun is not strongly affected by Neptune's gravity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any
Kuiper belt object whose orbit is not determined by resonance with Neptune (orbit ~ 40-50AU ).
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[From respelling and alteration of QB1 (in (15760) 1992 QB1, the provisional designation given to the first trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt object discovered after Pluto and Charon) + –o.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Derived from QB1 ("cue bee one"), short for (15760) 1992 QB1, the first such object discovered
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Examples
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She startled when Pod said, “There is a small cubewano one hundred twenty four megaklicks Solward.
365 tomorrows » 2007 » March : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2007
bilby commented on the word cubewano
"Objects near Plutinos that are not attracted into resonances with Neptune are called cubewanos. These make up the 'classical' Kuiper Belt, a relatively thin region of space that corresponds to the same plane in which most of the planets orbit, Parker explained.
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The first KBO found was initially designated 1992 QB1, Parker explains. Its a name that denotes the year, month and order of discovery and is typical for newfound objects whose orbits are not pinned down. It was later learned that 1992 QB1 was a 'main belt' KBO, not a Plutino, and so astronomers just began sounding out 'QB1' and a new term was born."
- Robert Roy Britt, 'Crazy Names: The Solar System's Nomenclature Wars' on space.com, 12 August 2003
KBO refers to Kuiper Belt Object.
June 12, 2008