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From today's featured articleEris is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, slightly smaller by volume than the dwarf planet Pluto, although it is 27 percent more massive. Discovered in January 2005 by a team based at Palomar Observatory, it was named after Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord. The ninth-most-massive object directly orbiting the Sun, Eris is the largest object in the Solar System that has not been visited by a spacecraft. It is a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disk and has one known moon, Dysnomia. It is about 96 astronomical units (14.4 billion kilometres; 8.9 billion miles) from the Sun, roughly three times as far away as Pluto. Except for some long-period comets, Eris and Dysnomia were the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System until 2018 VG18 was discovered in 2018. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi). (Full article...)
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On this dayJuly 29 Tisha B'Av begins at sunset (Judaism, 2020)
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Thomas Corwin (July 29, 1794 – December 18, 1865) was a politician from the U.S. state of Ohio. He represented Ohio in both houses of Congress, and served as the 15th governor of Ohio from 1840 to 1842 and the 20th U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1850 to 1853. He is best known for his sponsorship of the proposed Corwin Amendment, which was presented in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the oncoming American Civil War. This picture is a line engraving of Corwin, produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury. Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva
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