Dear Friend and Reader,
Five years ago,В Sedna came into view as a distant spec standing at the edge of our galaxy, like a mysterious woman debating whether or not to join in on the shivaree. Her classifications range from being a relative of the Oort Cloud, a member of the Kuiper Belt, or as the impetus to begin a new classification of objects called Distant Detached Objects.
Because she is so far away (as in, it is estimated that her orbit is in the range of ten thousand years) not very much is known about her. Scientists have deduced that she is a solid, deep red color comparable to Mars. They suggest she may have been a part of another system which, as it was floating along in the darkness, passed ours, and was pulled away from her native swirl and inducted (or perhaps abducted would be a better word) by our stronger gravity. I have also read that Neptune is the culprit of her abduction because of his heavy gravity, which fits very nicely into Sedna’s myth.
Sedna is the first and only cosmic body to be named for a deity in the Inuit Native culture of the Arctic circle. According to tradition, Sedna was once a mortal girl who was beautiful and knew it. Many men from villages far and near sought her hand in marriage, and she turned them all down. Her self-proclaimed beauty was so great that not any normal husband would do. Finally, after a particularly hard year, her father told her that she needed a husband to take care of her. The village was running low on food, and so if she would marry the next hunter that came to call, she would insure food and a warm bed for herself; it would be the wisest thing to do. As her father instructed, Sedna continued to brush her hair and stare at her reflection in the calm water by the shore.