On the frozen outskirts of the solar system, astronomers have discovered an orbiting object half the size of Pluto, the biggest find since the ninth planet was discovered in 1930.

They’ve named it Quaoar (KWAH-o-wahr), after a California Indian creation deity. It’s about one-tenth the size of Earth and orbits the sun every 288 years.

Quaoar is not a planet it’s a Kuiper Belt Object, a member of distant realm that’s just beginning to be explored.

Besides being nearly unpronounceable, this newcomer is creating an awkward situation in the solar system. Quaoar is remarkably similar to Pluto, strengthening the case against Pluto being considered a planet.

Planetary astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and postdoctoral scholar Chadwick Trujillo discovered the object in images taken June 4. They announced their discovery Monday in Birmingham, Ala., at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s division of planetary sciences.

Quoaor is 800 miles in diameter, but remained unseen for so long because it’s so far away and its surface doesn’t reflect much light, said Neil Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York.

The argument against Pluto as a planet has been around for a decade, since scientists began discovering similar, smaller objects and recognized the existence of the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy bodies where some comets originate.

Though Pluto discovered by Kansas native and Kansas University alumnus Clyde Tombaugh orbits right through the Kuiper Belt, many people objected to the suggestion that Pluto be kicked out of the planet pantheon and reclassified as a Kuiper Belt Object. Now, however, some astronomers say if Pluto is classified as a planet, they’d feel obligated not only to admit Quaoar, but 661 other catalogued Kuiper Belt Objects, including such obscure bodies as Ixion and Varuna.

Astronomers suspect there are millions of icy, rocky bodies in the ring that begins after the orbit of Neptune and goes out several billion miles. They believe that Kuiper Belt Objects are 5-billion-year-old relics left over from the proto-planetary disc that formed the solar system.

Pluto, less than one-thousandth the size of its neighbors, Uranus and Neptune, has always been a misfit, but Pluto expert Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute has long argued that it should remain a planet because it has its own moon and atmosphere and appears spherical. Brown said it’s not clear from the fuzzy Hubble pictures whether Quaoar is spherical.