The whole picture: Farfarout was first discovered in January 2018 using the Subaru Telescope, a size of 8 meters on top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii. Over the next few years, co-discoverer Scott Sheppard and colleagues tracked the object using a variety of telescopes around the world to read the orbit. They have since confirmed that it is the farthest object in our solar system.
The team has since learned that Farfarout inhabits 132 astronomical units (AUs) from the sun. A single AU is defined as the distance from the center of the earth to the center of the sun, or about 91.757 million miles. By comparison, the dwarf planet Pluto is only 34 AU from the Sun.
Farfarout should not be confused with Farout, another object discovered by Sheppard and the crew, which was also found in 2018. It’s not as far as Farfarout, hence the name.
Farfarout has a long orbital period and moves very slowly over the air. As such, it takes a full 1000 years to complete one orbit around the sun. This is why it took so many years of observations to map the trajectory correctly.
Scientists believe Farfarout may have been much closer to Neptune at some point, or perhaps to a more central place in our solar system.
Observations will continue on Farfarout and as scientists gain more knowledge about the object, they will work to give it a proper name (although I personally can not see what is wrong with Farfarout).
Masthead Credit Aphelleon