An illustration depicting how an object with an atmosphere occults a distant star. (Image credit: NAOJ) A very small body, far from the sun in an icy outer realm of the solar system, has mysteriously grown an atmosphere — and scientists are stumped as to how and why this happened. One possibility is that the atmosphere was produced through cryovolcanism, or basically ice volcanoes Another idea is the atmosphere could be related to an impact, but in that case, the impact must have happened relatively recently since such a thin atmosphere would leak into space and vanish within a thousand years. Furthermore, (612533) 2002 XV 93 is significantly smaller than Pluto, being about 310 miles (500 kilometers) across compared to Pluto's diameter of 1,477 miles (2,377 kilometers). Pluto is massive enough to retain a thin atmosphere, known as an exosphere, when it is near perihelion (the closest point in its elliptical orbit to the sun).…