Image by Alex Parker of NASA via HuffPost Science- Scientists revealed that the dwarf planet called Makemake has a moon
- The discovery came more than a decade after astronomers first spotted Makemake in 2005
- Makemake is the so-called little sister of Pluto
Scientists have revealed that the dwarf planet Makemake — the so-called little sister of Pluto — has a moon hiding behind it.
In an article written by Chris D’Angelo of HuffPost Science, it was disclosed that the atmosphere-less dwarf planet in the outermost reaches of our solar system has been hiding a companion; circling some 13,000 miles from the icy planetoid. The scientists named it MK2.
“Makemake is one of several dwarf planets that reside in the frigid outer realm of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a “junkyard” of countless icy bodies left over from our solar system’s formation. After discovering Makemake in 2005, astronomers had searched several times for a companion orbiting the icy world. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a tiny moon around Makemake that is estimated to be 100 miles wide,” the Hubble Site disclosed.
Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, shared that when he caught a glimpse of the object during an analysis of Hubble observations in April 2015, he assumed it wasn’t the first time someone had spied the moonlet.
Exciting discovery
Meanwhile, Parker said finding the MK2 is a “very exciting discovery.” Parker, who led the image analysis for the observations, told The Associated Press.
“It means that Makemake is no longer the odd-one-out in the moon-hosting Kuiper Belt dwarf planet club,” he said.
Parker added that the discovery will provide researchers “an opportunity to study Makemake in far greater detail”; perhaps answering questions about the mass, origin and evolution of the dwarf-planet system.
Makemake, named after the god of fertility in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island, is 870 miles wide and takes roughly 310 Earth-years to circle the sun. In comparison, the newly discovered moon has a diameter of about 100 miles.
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