474640 Alicanto

474640 Alicanto
Discovery
Discovered by	A. C. Becker
Discovery site	Cerro Tololo
Discovery date	6 November 2004
Designations
MPC designation	(474640) Alicanto
Named after	Alicanto; (Chilean mythology)
Alternative designations	2004 VN112
Minor planet category	TNO · detached-ETNO
Orbital characteristics
	Epoch 17 December 2020 (JD 2459200.5)
	Uncertainty parameter 3 · 0
Observation arc	15.94 yr (5,821 d)
Aphelion	608 AU (barycentric); 618.32 AU
Perihelion	47.289 AU
Semi-major axis	328 AU (barycentric); 332.80 AU
Eccentricity	0.8579
Orbital period (sidereal)	5900 yr (barycentric); 6071 yr (2,217,590 d)
Mean anomaly	0.6822°
Mean motion	0° 0m 0.72s / day
Inclination	25.572°
Longitude of ascending node	65.996°
Argument of perihelion	326.72°
Physical characteristics
Mean diameter	314 km (est.); 130±300 km (calculated);
Geometric albedo	0.04 (est.)
Spectral type	B–V = 0.900±0.085; V–R = 0.520±0.060; V–I = 0.970±0.085; BR = 1.42±0.06; Blue;
Apparent magnitude	23.3
Absolute magnitude (H)	6.5

474640 Alicanto (provisional designation 2004 VN₁₁₂) is a detached extreme trans-Neptunian object. It was discovered on 6 November 2004, by American astronomer Andrew C. Becker at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. It never gets closer than 47 AU from the Sun (near the outer edge of the main Kuiper belt) and averages more than 300 AU from the Sun. Its large eccentricity strongly suggests that it was gravitationally scattered onto its current orbit. Because it is, like all detached objects, outside the current gravitational influence of Neptune, how it came to have this orbit cannot yet be explained. It was named after Alicanto, a nocturnal bird in Chilean mythology.