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Centaur (Greek)

From Encyc

In Greek mythology a centaur was a member of a mythological race that had the lower body of a horse, and the upper body and arms like a human.

Astronomers named a class of atypical astronomical objects the Centaurs, that share qualities of both asteroids and comets.[1]

References

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  1. Tom Metcalfe (2021-10-07). "Our solar system's centaurs are half-asteroid, half-comet". Astronomy Magazine. Archived from the original on 2025-03-16. Retrieved 2026-07-12. Centaurs are among the strangest objects in the solar system. The first, dubbed Chiron, was spotted orbiting more than a billion miles from the Sun in 1977 and was originally thought to be an asteroid. But a few years later it was seen emitting a halo of gas — a “coma” — and a tail like a comet.