SIMBAD references

Centaurs constitute a separate population of Solar System objects, with orbits crossing one or more of the giant planets' orbits. They are located on unstable orbits with short lifetimes, and are probably transition objects between Trans-Neptunians and short-period comets. We present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of one of the Centaurs, 1995 GO, now named 8405 Asbolus, carried out at the ESO-Very Large Telescope (Mount Paranal, Chile) in May 1999. Spectra obtained in the J, H, and K bands show a rather featureless behavior with, in particular, no detection of H₂O ice.