2060 Chiron is a ringed small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. Discovered in 1977 by Charles Kowal, it was the first-identified member of a new class of objects now known as centaurs—bodies orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. Chiron is named after the centaur Chiron in Greek mythology.

Although it was initially called an asteroid and classified only as a minor planet with the designation "2060 Chiron", in 1989 it was found to exhibit behavior typical of a comet. Today it is classified as both a minor planet and a comet, and is accordingly also known by the cometary designation 95P/Chiron. More recently, a series of occultation events through the 2010s and early 2020s revealed that Chiron hosts rings, making it one of four minor planets known to have rings (the three others being 10199 Chariklo, Haumea, and Quaoar) and the only known comet to do so.

Chiron was discovered on 1 November 1977 by Charles Kowal from images taken on 18 October at Palomar Observatory. It was given the temporary designation of 1977 UB. It was found near aphelion and at the time of discovery it was the most distant known minor planet. Chiron was even claimed as the tenth planet by the press. Chiron was later found on several precovery images, going back to 1895, which allowed its orbit to be accurately determined. It had been at perihelion in 1945 but was not discovered then because there were few searches being made at that time, and these were not sensitive to slow-moving objects. The Lowell Observatory's survey for distant planets would not have gone down faint enough in the 1930s and did not cover the right region of the sky in the 1940s. The April 1895 precovery image was one month after the March 1895 perihelion.

This minor planet was named after Chiron, a half-human, half-horse centaur from Greek mythology. Son of the Titan Cronus and the nymph Philyra, Chiron was the wisest and most just of all centaurs, serving as an instructor of the Greek heroes. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 April 1978 (M.P.C. 4359). It was suggested that the names of other centaurs be reserved for objects of the same type.

Chiron, along with most major and minor planetary bodies, is not generally given a symbol in astronomy. A symbol was devised for it by Al H. Morrison and is mostly used among astrologers: it resembles a key as well as an OK monogram for Object Kowal.

Chiron's orbit was found to be highly eccentric (0.37), with perihelion just inside the orbit of Saturn and aphelion just outside the perihelion of Uranus (it does not reach the average distance of Uranus, however). According to the program Solex, Chiron's closest approach to Saturn in modern times was around May 720, when it came within 30.5±2.0 million km (0.204 ± 0.013 AU) of the planet. During this passage Saturn's gravity caused Chiron's semi-major axis to decrease from 14.55±0.12 AU to 13.7 AU. Chiron's orbit does not intersect Uranus' orbit.

Chiron attracted considerable interest because it was the first object discovered in such an orbit, well outside the asteroid belt. Chiron is classified as a centaur, the first of a class of objects orbiting between the outer planets. Chiron is a Saturn–Uranus object because its perihelion lies in Saturn's zone of control and its aphelion lies in that of Uranus. Centaurs are not in stable orbits and will be removed by gravitational perturbation by the giant planets over a period of millions of years, moving to different orbits or leaving the Solar System altogether. Chiron likely comes from the Kuiper belt and will probably become a short-period comet in about a million years. Chiron came to perihelion (closest point to the Sun) in 1996 and aphelion in May 2021.

The visible and near-infrared spectrum of Chiron is neutral, and is similar to that of C-type asteroids and the nucleus of Halley's Comet. The near-infrared spectrum of Chiron shows absence of water ice. The infrared spectrum, however, from 0.97 to 5.27 μm, as revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope reveals the presence of gas in the coma and a diverse inventory of ices, on the surface or in the coma. Absorption bands of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ethane, propane, and acetylene were detected, together with water ice in its amorphous state. In addition, irradiation byproducts of methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide were detected under both reducing (e.g., ethane) and oxidizing (e.g., CO₃) conditions; however, complex carbon-bearing molecules resulting from the combined irradiation of –CH– and –CO– groups (such as H₂CO, CH₃CHO, or CH₃COOH) were not observed, which may indicate a physical or temporal segregation of the methane and carbon dioxide reservoirs. A key finding was the detection of fluorescent methane emissions, providing the first evidence of a gas coma rich in this compound. Gaseous carbon dioxide emission was also identified in the fundamental stretching band at 4.27 μm. The authors argue that the presence of methane emission is the first proof of the desorption of methane due to a density phase transition of amorphous water ice at low temperature (61 K) previously studied in the laboratory.