Welcome to the solar system! Dwarf planet and plutoid Makemake!

William Atkins
Monday, 21 July 2008 20:42

Science - Space

The International Astronomical Union recently recognized Makemake as a dwarf planet and classified it as a plutoid. Makemake, the celestial body, was named after Makemake, the bird-man god of Easter Island.


The astronomical naming society International Astronomical Union (IAU) has given the name "Makemake" to the newest member of the family of dwarf planets—the fourth one, along with Pluto, Eris, and Ceres).

Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh) was previously known as 2005 FY₉, and unofficially as the “Easterbunny.” (The dwarf planet Makemake was discovered just after the religious holiday Easter in 2005.)

According to the July 19, 2008 news release “Fourth dwarf planet named Makemake” by the IAU, members of the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) decided to make MakeMake the newest (and third) member of the plutoid family (along with Pluto and Eris) in our solar system and classify it as a new (and fourth) dwarf planet (along with Pluto, Ceres, and Eris)

Makemake, a reddish object covered with frozen methane and ethane gases, orbits the planet Neptune. It has no known satellites circling it. Makemake is one of the largest objects in the outer solar system—being about three-fourth the diameter of the dwarf planet (and plutoid) Pluto.

It is the second brightest Tran-Neptunion Object (TNO), only Pluto is brighter. A TNO is any object that orbits the Sun at a distance further away than the planet Neptune. Amateur telescope users on Earth will be able to see Makemake as an approximate magnitude 16.5 object.

Makemake, formally designed as (136472) Makemake (the “136472” is due to its classification as a minor planet), was originally discovered in March 31, 2005, and announced publicly on July 29, 2005, by a team led by Michael E. Brown, who is from the California Institute of Technology.

Mike Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at CalTech, named it Makemake for a specific reason. Please read page two for the answer.