Orbiting within the Kuiper Belt, a vast cloud of icy debris left over from the solar system's formation, the oddball is estimated to be 600 kilometers long but just 360 kilometers wide, making it one of the largest elongated bodies ever detected. (sciencemag.org)
Astronomers believe this region, called the Oort cloud, contains a vast collection of icy debris left over from material that came together to form the sun, Earth, and the other major planets 4.6 billion years ago. (discovermagazine.com)
STIS detected the giant structures as far away as 37 billion miles (60 million kilometers) away from V Hydrae, more than eight times farther away than the Kuiper Belt of icy debris at the edge of our solar system is from the sun. (sciencedaily.com)